Ghost Love Score
by demonegg
Summary: Locked away by a madman, he flies with her. Cut by that same man's knife, he bleeds for her. Drowning in the only reality he knows, he dreams of her. And there, with her, he lives.
1. Prologue

A/N: First off, I really really really want to change my pen name on here. Unless I get a whole bunch of people complaining, I probably will. Consider this a heads up.

Secondly, this piece is somewhat experimental. There are two different scenarios, if you will, that bleed together. One happens in a distorted real world, the other in a dream world. Except for the prologue, one will usually follow the other, and they will always be marked by different tenses and styles. But for clarity, the real world will be in italics, and the dream will be in normal font. I have also separated the scenes into chapters. My intention with this piece is to be somewhat vague and disorienting, but I hope this clears up undue confusion. Also, there will be plenty of dialogue in this story; it just wasn't appropriate for me to put a whole bunch in this set of chapters.

At least for a while, I will probably post a few chapters at a time (don't want to, but I will). I actually have the first 14 (or 16) done, but overwhelming subscribers' inboxes seems cruel, especially when I'm absolutely obsessive about keeping the number of emails in mine down to a minimum.

As usual, I do not own FFVII, or the title, which comes from a most excellent Nightwish song. The rating may go up in the future, but for now, I'm leaving it as it is. I'm reluctant to give an 'M' rating to something merely because of language the average high-schooler uses. But if I add more LSV in future chapters (as is planned), then I'll up it.

Thanks for reading.

* * *

'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly.'

-Salman Rushdie, _The Satanic Verses_

_**XXXX**_

_Flying. _

_He flies: legs still, arms stretched out; his neck twitches to the left, and he bears right, counterbalancing the smoky currents like a pro. But only in amateurs does force crush the lungs. It cuts him straight through, makes it hard to breathe. Perhaps he hasn't adjusted to the altitude yet._

_Something soft and springy props him up. A cloud, maybe? A soft white cotton-blend cloud whisking him away like a sultan of the skies, away from this palace at Nibelheim, to soar up, up, and away from magic green rivers. His hands flail in the breeze, then grip lightning rods. Runners that steer the cloud, they jut incongruously from the buoyant foam. They feel like metal, he thinks: cold, hard, a hollow silver ring to them when he tests them, tapping first with a boot, then with a flapping hand. Perhaps he's on a plane, a glider that will carry him into the night._

_He doesn't get far in that dim twilight before he encounters turbulence. Thump. His plane jostles him in its maneuvers. Thump. The ten thousand psi on his chest refuse to relent. Thump thump. Warning lights must be flashing because his cloud is stained red. Thumpity-thump-bump._

_Take him down below, the air traffic controller says. In a professional white coat with wiry glasses that glint menacingly in the tongues of light, he speaks with a nasal twang; he must be sick._

_Yessir, says the pilot. Consider it done._

_Oh good, the ride is almost over. He would hate to get motion sickness and ruin the cloud-plane. Someone else might need it someday._

_His namesake aircraft veers off, nose downward. They're losing altitude fast. Too fast, maybe. He doesn't trust this pilot. He thinks he's in for a rough landing. So does everyone else apparently, when dangerous beings howl for his flesh._

_His body flails in an arc that rips more life from his veins as he remembers to scream. All the innocence of his hometown up in smoke. Mom! Tifa! he cried. But his house was burning, he'd never get inside, he was too late. Through the suffocating haze, a man emerged, hauling limp, singed lumps of something sort of human. Neighbors. Tifa's teacher. Where was she? Where the fuck was she?! He moved with frantic footfalls. The Reactor! Sephiroth was there. She chased him. He ran. Faster. Hustle, Strife. You can't let her die. He was sorry, though, so goddamn sorry. He was too late. Her abandoned, broken, bleeding body sagged in his arms, but her blood still pulsed under his fingertips and her cheeks sweated with salty heat. But he came for her, and in his desperate delusion, he thought she smiled at him like a lady to her hero and for a moment it was nice. But the sounds of death still bellowed from within the reactor. They got his best friend, too, and he was a SOLDIER. Finish him, Cloud. He nodded. That son of a bitch was going to pay. You hear me, Sephiroth? You're going to pay. Step, step, step step step: the hiss of blade through skin, and the broken wail of glass. My hometown. My mother. Tifa. Mine. You took it away from me. Die already. Why won't you fucking die? Something important just exploded inside him. Shrapnel stuck from his chest. Suspended him over the green. It was his first time flying. He groped along the knife edge for sure footing. He shoved his weight to the left, and flung his enemies into the glowing abyss. A burst of pain busted through him. He was missing half his heart, wondered if it's still outside the reactor. Was it a lub, or a dub? It's still gone. And he knows he needs it to live. The other half grows fainter._

_Mayday! Mayday! Can't somebody hear him? He's too young to die!_

_Lines are crossed. Communication is down._

_He crashes._


	2. Prima Nocte 1

_He has died. A great white light looms before him. The Promised Land? He thought there'd be more dead people. Hi Mom, you here?_

_A voice booms above him: the laconic tenor of a deity. He straightens a little and tries to calm the spastic rhythm in his veins. It's not supposed to do that, but he's just glad he still has all his parts. The backs of his arms are cold against a long expanse of surgical steel, or silver, or gold. He lies on the scale of the gods before they determine if he's pure enough for heaven. They weigh his heart. A rustle, a flutter of papyrus angel wings shudders somewhere near his head; then: the dull scratch as his name joins the multitudes of those who have gone before him. Blessed or damned? Did he pass? Huh? Did he?_

_A thin metal screech explodes in his heart. Welcome to Hell, the devil chants. Pass me the scalpel. The warning lights bleed beneath him. And the great white light grays into darkness._

_He dreams._

**XXXX**

Cloud Strife never knew what hit him. Literally. The last thing he remembered was: nothing; and then he woke up in a nearly bare room with his head wrapped and a cross of bleached paper bandages over his heart . But he might not have ever woken up, had it not been for the window. About the height and length of two people, more a door than a window if anything, it stretched from ceiling to floor; and through its crystal pure panes, collimated sunlight drummed against the tips of his eyelids until he lifted himself up and pushed back against the pillows. But even from this adjusted angle, the sun was too bright and the glass too reflective to distinguish anything on the other side without closer approach. Had it not been for the light streaming through, he would have assumed it to be a mirror.

Bleary-eyed and still exhausted, and perhaps a little knocked-around, he examined the rest of his surroundings. He was in a hospital room alone on a small twin bed. Persistent starched sheets scratched his skin underneath a surprisingly plush white comforter with with faint hint of a pattern threading through the fabric. Circumscribed by four blindingly white walls, three similar beds--one on each side of him and one to the front, situated directly beneath the large window--lay empty, their metal frames glinting menacingly to his still unfocused eyes until he tilted his head to the right just-so to avoid the glare. Their coverlets had been yanked into precise edges, peaking in sharp points at the corners, and a pillow lay uncompressed atop each, but they carried no blankets. Other than the beds and the window, the room was empty. Pivoting his head to the back, he spotted a heavily bolted steel door latched from inside the room. Whoever had locked it hadn't left.

With a smothered roar, he stretched his arms towards the ceiling and inched his legs towards the edge of the bed. To his great relief he found himself fully clothed in a pair of clean, plain, standard-issue hospital scrubs dyed to a peculiar color. The tile floor chilled his bare feet, and he longed for a pair of slippers, or boots, anything that would make traveling easier, especially for his already shocked and fatigued muscles. First shuffling towards the door, he tugged at the lock and pulled at the handle, but without success. It appeared to be jammed, or at least required an inordinate amount of strength from one committed to its confines to open it. His fingertips brushed along the edges of the door, seeking a potential obstruction, but found nothing, save for an almost indistinguishable plate eyelevel above the handle. He pried a fingernail between the hairline crack and lifted it to discover what appeared to be a scanner of sorts: a small round glass plate shielding a tiny light. Sticking both his thumbs against the glass had no effect, nor did placing his eyes over it, other than to produce a resonant click. If the door had unlocked, it still was too heavy to budge, so he abandoned the device, only to hear another loud click when he snapped the plate shut. Strange, but maximum-security compounds never spared any expense when it came to harboring their most esteemed and valuable personages, or the most dangerous. He wasn't entirely sure which category he fell into, but given the placement of the lock on the inside of the room, he assumed he was part of the former.

He felt along the walls for balance, as he stumbled to the great window on the opposite side of the room, where the sun had warmed the tile to a much more comfortable, almost drowsy level. He pressed his nose against the vaguely hot glass and squinted. The entire outside of the room seemed to be permeated by a great white light, and he could discern nothing familiar, save for the searing pain from shrunken pupils. He felt along the bottom of the glass, hands searching for a latch, a handle that would open it up to the outside world, but found nothing.

He slowly turned and sank to the floor, burying his head in his hands. He decided he didn't like this room so much. Where were the nurses? Shouldn't he have a call button to ring for help?

But maybe it was the bolted door, or perhaps the light pouring over him, but even these questions lacked urgency. He felt drugged, or at least too mummified to do anything, but he still tried to make sense of the situation: he was alone and wounded in a hospital room. He didn't know where that was or how he got there, only that he would be able to leave, he assumed, once he was capable of opening the only door that was quite possibly protecting him from someone or some thing. The window might be able to tell him more, once the sun ascended higher in the sky or had set; but for now he was stuck, and supremely tired. His eyes shuttered close, and as he sank into a deep slumber, he imagined hearing someone tap on the glass, but even that couldn't shake him. If it were a nurse, she'd come in anyways. If it were somebody else, then it didn't matter. Nobody was getting through that door.

For now, he was safe.


	3. Prima Nocte 2

**XXXX**

_They've sealed him up. Packaged him. Return to sender. He's going to get out of here. They've stopped cutting him. It's over. He'll heal. He has to. _

_Scratch. Scratch. They're writing down his address. His new home. Cloud #451297. Must be a zip code. Or a seat on a train. _

_They carry him back and he feels like puking again. Whatever they shot him with is wearing off. But he'll be okay, he just knows it._

_He faints._

**XXXX**

He awoke in bed, lying on his right side, cocooned in the warmth of his sheets. His limbs felt no different than they had earlier, perhaps a little steadier, he thought, as he inhaled deeply and stood. But when he opened his eyes, he was met with white. Maneuvering to the door, perhaps out of skepticism or self-preservation, he examined it for sign of entry, forced or otherwise--anything that would show where he was and how he had ended up in the bed. But he found nothing. He shook his head and ran his fingers through the hair peeking through his bandages: spikes. He had spiky hair, and he didn't remember it. Part of him felt sure it was familiar, even if it were odd, like an explosion of ferny peaks rooted to his head. But he shrugged and chalked it up to the head injury. To put it simply: he had a slight case of amnesia, and had sleepwalked to his bed. Or it was a dream. So he sighed, and turned around to reexamine his surroundings. The room was still well-lit, but more manageable, with the sun appearing somewhere overhead, shrouding the walls in shadows of midday gray.

And once again he would've flopped back on his bed and fallen asleep had there not been the window. The sun outside still seemed unnaturally brilliant, although he grew less and less sure of that by the minute. He was positive it was because of the girl. Either the source of the light or merely a channel, she was embraced by a radiant aura as she stood there unmoving. Her features were obscured by her halo, but the slight, curvy build clued him into her gender. She made absolutely no movement, other than a slight fluttering, a shimmer of luster, which he attributed to the whispers of her breath. Perhaps she was watching him, waiting for him to make the first move.

He raised a finger and tapped light pecks on the glass in an indecipherable greeting. "Hello," he repeated in a voice stronger and more resolved than what he felt, and a black spot over her heart he hadn't previously noticed, coalesced then disappeared, as if it had been empty then suddenly filled with a presence. Her eyes snapped open but he knew this color. They were red.

Her eyes when watching him, hypnotized him in red.


	4. Prima Nocte 3

**XXXX**

_The jungle coils around him, swims down his throat. The air has turned to liquid, it's so fucking humid. He hates this place. It chokes him and there are snakes. A slimy red one uncurls around his wrist. The creature slinks out from two venomous punctures in his skin and twists. _

_Why are they moving him through someplace green with all these damn snakes? They're everywhere. Crawling on his windows. Huge dark ones, mouths gaping, pumping their poison into his system. They know he's there. And they won't stop.  
_

_He sees._

**XXXX**

The glow had softened to a faint moonlight, but her gaze remained unperturbed, and he was finally able to get a good look at her. In addition to her eyes, her fair skin also glowed faintly with its own life. But her hair was dark, darker than the shadows, dark like the threads swimming headlong through his hem, or reflective like that all-seeing eye holed up in his door; it hung in sheets around her face: three full sides and a crooked sweep in the front. A smooth nose broke into the half-tip of an ocean wave, before the ghostly bow of unresponsive lips.

A sheet of white clung loosely to her hips, to cut off right at mid-thigh. Her arms and legs were bare, and she wore no shoes. He would've thought her to be an angel had she shown any wings, but as it was she looked human, with a mere hint of the supernatural. Like a specter, an illusion.

But since he was otherwise alone, he waved. She blinked, then mimicked his move timorously. Egged on, he continued. His fingers traced shapes onto the glass, while her eyes recorded his every move. When he backed away from the mirror, she would approach, and when he would lay his hands against the glass, she would match the base of hers with his. He smiled when her fingers fell a good inch short of his own, and she grinned back.

"Can you hear me?" he yelled. "What's your name?"

She smiled, but didn't respond, not even to copy his moves, so he drew out the sound and over-enunciated each syllable. "Wwhaaat'ss yyourr nnaamme?"

He tried again and again. Louder, softer, same words, different words-- nothing worked. He thought that maybe they didn't speak the same language, that he lumbered in a foreign tongue. She had no idea what he was saying.

Perhaps all they could do was play charades and memorize each other's thumbprints.

But what if all they could do was watch?


	5. Prima Nocte 4

A/N: Will probably post the chapters in this first book (Prima Nocte), in fairly close succession. Maybe not every other day, but every few days. I really want to get this story on the road.

& As always, thanks for reading.

* * *

**XXXX**

_Like a marionette, a puppet hung by rope, he has no control over his limbs. They move with an external mind, a sick one, one that pulls and pushes at the same time. They bang him up against his prison. His kneecap explodes. His head hurts. But he doesn't stop. The convulsions own his soul now. Dance, they chortle. _

_Dance, motherfucker, dance.  
_

_He does._

**XXXX**

When she wasn't watching him, she walked back and forth in front of the window. Fifteen steps to the left, she pivoted, then covered the fifteen steps to the right. She never got winded or bored or stopped to look at the endless void during this exercise; she simply paced as if it were the most natural thing to do. At first she had marched with a high instep, shoulders back and knees perpendicular to her chest. But in his opinion, she looked stilted, a little out of place in the military ranks. He never told this to her--or the glass--but a slight sway would've suited her much better. The tail-edge of a sashay: graceful steps, light but firm, or quick and fluid. She would look like a woman who could hold her own as the undisputed queen of time and space.

Occasionally when she was not walking, she slept. She never lay down when he was conscious, but if he were careful and made no sudden movements when he tiptoed to the grand porthole, he would catch her slumbering silently while she assumed he was still asleep. The skeletal ridge of her back would face him, one end undulating up with an inhale, then seesawing down with the out breath. Her hair splayed into a brilliant fan upon the invisible floor, and her aura refracted into a thousand and one chameleon colors shed one at a time upon her magnificent plumage. The hues came to him in scales and he memorized their names: magenta for morning, violet at dusk, gold at high noon, and a silver midnight.

At these times, with her prism diffused and her beguiling eyes tightly closed, he would occasionally shift to study himself with stern clarity. The first time he had waved in excited acknowledgment of another soul (hoping, perhaps, that maybe this one could hear him), but as the visitor paraded a series of actions into an exact facsimile of his own, he realized he gazed upon his own face.

He was, to be blunt, a little disappointed. For other than the spikes, he recognized nothing.

His skin was of the same waxen translucence as hers, but his nose was a little more angular and his jaw a little sharper. His hair paled in comparison. While her eyes burned red, his froze him with accusations. They should be filled with life, memories, emotions, but they held nothing except disbelief and a twinge of chagrin. And no matter how hard he tried, or how long he stared, he couldn't remember their color. He ran through all the hues he had already learned, but it wasn't there. He existed in a missing part of the spectrum. He pounded the window hard in an attempt to force it back, but it stayed away and she awoke.

And for once, instead of looking at her, he stared at the hand that couldn't be his hand, as separate from him as it was. It felt no pain and showed no signs of bruising. He punched the floor, kicked the wall, but still there was nothing. He cursed, there should be something there, but perhaps he hadn't tried hard enough, so he ran full speed, doing the most drastic thing he could think of, and flung himself at a wall. He bounced back and landed on his feet. He ran faster to the door and slammed into the cold steel. Not even a headache. He violently punched the bed frames. No cuts or bruises. He was aware of her watching him with an almost sad expression on her face, but he kept at it until he sank to the floor, not physically fatigued, but still exhausted. He should have felt invincible; he had escaped the laws of nature. Here, every action didn't produce an equal and opposite reaction.

But the void had taken over, and confusion had left him helpless. His chest dry-heaved in spurts. Something was wrong.

He fell asleep next to the window with his hand directly over the image of hers, reaching for anybody out there.


	6. Prima Nocte 5

**XXXX**

_His muscles don't work anymore. He's stiff. Stiff as a board. Dead as a doornail. Rigor mortis is moving in, setting his posture for eternity. He locks his jaw. He refuses to scream. Ever. The snakes won't get him like that. He'll stand his ground, watching, daring them to strike._

_He waits_.

**XXXX**

Every hour, more or less, he would check the door. He would unlock it, pull, tug, grunt, curse; but the metal giant refused to give. He spit on his hands, used the door jamb as leverage, twisted and pulled while keeping a thumb or finger or eye on the scanner. Still nothing happened.

He found no tools with which to unscrew the bolts, and he couldn't plow through steel.

He was simply too weak to open the door.


	7. Prima Nocte 6

**XXXX**

_A train comes. Its lone headlight shines into his eyes and he follows it back and forth, back and forth. It sure makes a lot of deliveries. But it's quiet. Just a swoosh-swoosh, swoosh-swoosh in the air. It stops in front of him. Stares at him head on. He holds its gaze, challenging. He knows what happens next. They're facing off. Blink and you get run over. It's the way the world works, and he knows that._

_There's a silence.  
_

_'This one isn't responding, Doctor.'_

_He blinks._

**XXXX**

He avoided the bed.

Upon awakening he first rushed to the window, then zigzagged between the awful bedposts to the door, then crossed back to the window. She smiled at his antics, but there was no laughter in her eyes. She must have realized the cause of his distress, with the thousand cautious glances flashed in its direction.

He really hated that bed. When swallowed by its great downy whiteness, his head beamed thoughts back and forth and met no resistance. An idea should have distorted the echoes, or a memory captured them, or a fond wish welcomed them home. But the thoughts blinked back and forth in that cavernous shell and thundered in his chest when nothing was reclaimed.

He labored for breath, and his tongue groped with a mantra until he exhausted his energy and stumbled into a dreamless slumber. My name is Cloud Strife, he radioed into the darkness. My name is Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife is my name.

It was a start. He had to start somewhere.


	8. Prima Nocte 7

**XXXX**

_He wants death to come. But it doesn't. It goes to visit some schmuck who doesn't want to go. Ha ha! Isn't that funny? He can't die. Ha ha ha. He's __fucking__ invincible. _

_Gaia, it hurts. _

_Let's make a bet. If my number gets called, today's my lucky day. Step up, come round, spin the wheel, the man in white calls. Place your bets. But but but. No buts. The wheel's going. Lucky number seven, eh? Here's hoping. Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows! Ho-ho! Number 6! Tough luck, no dice, better luck next time. _

_He loses._

**XXXX**

The empty room felt like a tomb. Immaculate white on white.


	9. Prima Nocte 8

**A/N: Decided to go ahead and post the rest of Prima Nocte. I've started, but not finished the next book of chapters, so I'm not sure when I'll get those online. They'll also be longer chapters, with more emphasis on dialogue/action. At least that's the plan. But planning rarely works for me in writing, so who knows? But in the meantime, I will probably post more Null Set and a Reno story and a story inspired by some of the most ridiculous and twisted logic that I've ever seen, related to the so-called love triangle, of course. Just FYI, in case my rate of posting becomes further sporadic, but I'm definitely not abandoning anything.  
**

**As always, thanks for reading.  
**

**XXXX**

_The snakes hiss at him sometimes when they want him to die. _

_Other times they wait silently, to catch him off guard, snap their mouths over his heart, and he's a goner. But he knows they can hear the beating, it's going so fast and it's drumming thump thump in his chest and they're licking their long metal fangs, priming them for the kill, but when?_

_He's alone._

**XXXX**

Somewhere along the way, she had started to move differently. Less martial, more with the ease of a soft spring rain. When had it happened? She blinked, and he had missed it. Lost within the nothingness in his head.

She watched him, too, as she walked, her eyes trailing him like they were following a painting. Sometimes he would walk with her, matched step for step, and sometimes he would walk the opposite direction and they'd meet in the middle and high five on the glass or slap an imaginary baton into the other's waiting palm. He wasn't sure why she did it. Maybe the void was just as lonely for her as it was for him. He had woken in a cold sweat one morning after he dreamt she wasn't real, but rather the projection of one sick scientist or another. He stumbled drunkenly to the window, heady from the heart coiled in his throat, with the rush of blood on the way up and a loss of breath somewhere in the somersault. He knocked on the surface a few times, then flicked it. Clack, ping. It was glass. He pressed his ear to the broad plane and listened. Nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. Wouldn't he hear a buzz or the hum of mako if it were only a television? He pressed his face to the glass and squinted for pixels. None that he could detect, not even when she put her face to the pane and he could see the terrain of her lips, down to the ridge where, he imagined, she had split her lip in a fall when she was seven.

He shook his head and his eyelids drooped into their normal stupor. That was nonsense. There was no such thing as a fallen angel. He swiped his hand in a broad arc and nodded at her to join him in their daily exercise. They paced themselves, trailing their fingers in tandem along the length of the window as they passed.

It wasn't much, but it beat walking alone.


	10. Prima Nocte 9

**XXXX**

_Bars. _

_Someone writes a wiry grid and hooks it to his window. A chart. Blood count. Xs skitter across the page chasing blanks. Or the blanks shoot the Xs. It's madness. He can't follow. He has Xs in his eyes and his eyes hurt and he still can't follow._

_He blinks._

**XXXX**

They played games sometimes. He had been comparing her palm lines to his own when she suddenly huffed on the glass. She peeked around the steamy fog and smiled, then drew a finger through the condensation to image an open crosshatch of nine squares, before boxing a lonely 'x' in the middle.

A scene of a small courtyard surrounded by browns and greens came to his mind. Slimy moss slid down a rock and stained the backs of his legs when he fidgeted nervously and spied, over the mottled, pimpled slate of the boulder, another world he envied. In the dewy morning sunlight, a ripple of firs hushing their unwelcomed audience in the background, four children clustered around a tattered paper. A young girl no more than seven gripped an oversized yellow pencil in her tiny fist and determinedly measured out two parallel lines on the sheet, before spinning the paper and repeating the process in the other direction. The three boys kept punching each other, twisting out of the others' headlocks or stuffing someone else's nose in their armpits for the chance to play first. When she finished, she brushed the dust from her yellow dress and stomped her foot. "Stop that, or I'll tattle," she warned. A flock of geese flew overhead, and their shadows darkened his legs as he watched them play twelve rounds of tic-tac-toe.

This other, bigger girl also knew how to play, so he smiled and daubed an 'o,' down and to the left from hers. She countered with another haphazard cross, then he circled something else, rendering the board into nothing more than organized chaos. They played a few more games, created a monster fifty-by-fifty board that contributed more to eye strain and loss of breath than to the relief of boredom, then switched to portraitures. He thought she drew him like half a sun, with his spikes radiating out from a giant orb and two smaller circles included over a boat-bottom mouth. His picture of her fell lopsided, with her eyes disproportionate to her head and her smile swallowing whatever was left--other than her feet, of course, which could crush an entire army. They tried again and again, aiming more for realism with the facial features, while distorting the rest. She drew him brandishing a mighty sword, and he gave her angel wings.

They made up new activities like staring contests, or trying to catch the other person's hand from behind the glass. They would place both hands on the pane atop each other; eyes steely, shoulders bladed like a lion's, they would stare each other down until one of them blinked, then the other would stamp their hand somewhere else on the glass, while the first person had to match the move and race back to the original position. He was never sure who won what most of the time, but he was glad for the distraction.

But the game they returned to most was tic-tac-toe.

Even if they were both too old for it and kept coming up 'cat's.'


	11. Prima Nocte 10

**XXXX**

_A whole bunch of passengers walk on by. They stop and look at the freak in the glass. They point and comment. The one with the glasses laughs. But they don't get on. Take his ticket. He's nothing special. It's a first-class ticket, and he's coach, at best. Cargo, maybe. Please. He just wants off this ride he's on. _

_He begs._

**XXXX**

He wished he could meet her face to face with no glass between them. He could almost pretend the heat of the sun on the window was the warmth radiating from her fingers, or the backsplash of his breath was the caress of her tender words. He wondered if she could speak, what her voice would sound like: rich and melodious or light and free. Or maybe she'd just sound normal, the most natural girl in the world.

But she couldn't speak through walls, and he couldn't bust through them. They were two people stuck in a tower of their own babble, rendered mute by plaster and paint.


	12. Prima Nocte 11

**XXXX**

_Green, White, Darkness. White, Darkness, Green. It doesn't matter the order they come, one will follow the other. Six permutations. Six different ways it can come and he gets to know all of them well. His favorite is 'Darkness, Green, White.' It goes from dark to light, and he likes that--even if it hurts the most--because there's always a chance that this time will be the last and he'll graduate to someplace better._

_He hopes_.

**XXXX**

Sometimes, when he was watching her, his eyes unfocused and honed in on his own reflection. He hated it, it was rude. But for the life of him, he couldn't remember the color of his eyes. There were lots of things he couldn't recall--everything before he woke up in this room, for that matter--unless he had always been here, but even then he didn't feel newly born, and if that were the case, where was his mother? He was missing _something. _But no fit of amnesia bothered him so much as the inability to call his own eyes by their name. If a name reflected an object's nature, then he knew nothing about them, and nothing about himself. It was the exact reason he rushed to the window for her. Her eyes bled for him their color. He knew he would eventually find everything in them: her name, her favorite thing to do, what she dreamt about at night, what she loved most. Already he knew she was his friend and liked silly games, and already he had watched her eyes shift from red to ruby. But with his own, it was like a missing piece stared back at him, or like holding a treasure box in one hand, the forgotten weight of the missing key falling through the other.


	13. Prima Nocte 12

**XXXX**

_Today he got an A+. A fine little experiment he is. He's coming along quite nicely. He isn't sure what he did, but it must have been good. Maybe they'll pass him the next time around. Gold star, level up, welcome to SOLDIER. Whatever comes next, he's on his way._

_He smiles._

**XXXX**

He crawled along the baseboard seeking a secret passage, a trap door, a hidden key or a code reflected into almost invisible ink that would free him from this accursed room. He didn't discover much, other than the floor was spotless: not a mote of dust or speck of dirt; and that by pushing on his hands, he could skid quite comfortably across the waxed tile. The walls, he also discerned, he could scratch with his fingers. Clawing hard enough dulled his nails, but about twenty repetitions produced a shallow mark. First he chopped out in cuneiform C-L-an octagonal O-U-D. It took him several hours, if, as he suspected, the cycles of her brightness adhered to a solar, or lunar, or perhaps stellar calendar. He had half a mind to record his days there, but saw no point in starting then: time had no meaning when he had no place to go. So he took to marking other events. In a shadowed spot near the floor, he carved sixteen tallies for the times she blinked, a millisecond dimming of the great nothingness. Switching to the then unused fingers of his left hand, he eroded a new set of ninety-seven tally marks to the right of the window just above his name-- one for each smile. They had played four different types of games since he awoke, so he scraped: l l l l, just to the left of the smile marks. His bookkeeping system was lacking, but without any memories, he had no other events to pen. He had his entire life boiled down to 117 tallies, 117 blemishes on a pure white wall.


	14. Prima Nocte 13

**XXXX**

_The hand of god brushes the hair out of his eyes. Soothing him. A puff of cotton cloud and the smell of preservation. The only glimpse of heaven he gets here reeks of formaldehyde. _

_But he takes it. He knows the pain is coming with its sharp, evil talons and steely eyes. The eagle eating out his liver. But the hand is someone's. Someone is out there. He's not alone. _

_He believes._

**XXXX**

Once during his hourly, or semi-hourly rounds when he tried the door, he left the security plate swung open. She had been watching his motions with her usual attentiveness, so he waved at the window then pointed. She didn't look stronger than him, but he thought maybe there was a latch on the other side that kept him from leaving.

"Doooor," he drawled. He pointed to her again, then to the mass of steel. "Oooppenn doooorr." He gave a few tugs, tossed in some glances and well-timed index fingers, and stopped only when she tucked her head down and grinned. He ran back to the window and made two new marks: one added to insurmountable monument of smile streaks, to which he forfeited half his wall, the other he placed directly next to his name. CLOUD l. Or: CLOUD, and the first time she told him yes.

**XXXX**


	15. Buonanotte 1

**A/N: **I unfortunately realized that I have to add one more variable for this story to make sense. This chapter is essentially a whole bunch of Prima Nocte chapters, but I didn't split them up because I thought they would lose whatever coherency they have. Each 'chapter' is now separated by a series of dashes, whereas scenes are still marked by **XXXX**. For the most part, there are three scenes to each chapter: the horrific reality (italics), the dream time (regular font), and a dream/'memory' within a dream (regular font). Occasionally the dream and memories will bleed together, but I hope it will be clear. I use the term 'memories' loosely. While some of them may have happened the way he remembered, others did not. Cloud's reality is coloring both his past and present dream, making him reliably unreliable.

I repeat, **some details and scenes are very, very wrong in view of canon or characterization. **They very much depend on his current mental and emotional state, i.e. confusion, alienation, powerlessness, desperation, anger, blame, etc.

I really hope this is not too confusing. But given the nature of this piece, I didn't know how else to do it.

Thanks for reading.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

_He bleeds in his dizzy way._

_Round_

_ ........and round,_

_where_

_ ...............it goes,_

_....he never_

_.......................knows._

_.....lub-dub....._

**XXXX**

The morning brought a golden sun and a woman sleeping in the next bed. Perhaps she had misunderstood him about the door. He didn't mind the company, but he had assumed that when she opened it, she would release him from the room.

But instead, she had helped herself to a bed, silently tiptoeing in and tucking between the blankets.

He ducked out of his covers and padded to the door, careful not to disturb her. Again, it wouldn't budge and he had to curse his luck. No matter how he looked at it, four walls and an immovable door still boiled down to a prison, never mind the company, or how beautiful they were. Perhaps he was biased, having no recollection of anybody else, but he thought she looked borderline perfect and so humanly real that he itched to touch her.

But he wouldn't. Cloud Strife was patient, so he wouldn't reach to her without her permission, not without absolute certainty that she wouldn't disappear on contact.

He was alone in this world save for one person. His only possession, if she could be called that, his only friend. He wasn't about to lose her.

So he plopped on the mattress, waiting and watching and counting her breaths, until he too succumbed to sleep.

**XXXX**

He awoke to a note of summer skies and cherry blossoms, something simultaneously familiar and out of reach, much like a memory. He saw grass feathering, scuttling along his skin as he closed his eyes to a long-ago sunset. A nearby fruit vendor's stand wafted hints of apple, citrus, and strawberry over the shushing field.

He was seven, alone, and she was chasing butterflies.

She'd run this way and that with a rapier thrust to her net, while the winged creatures sidestepped like mere bread and butter pats slip sliding through the wind.

His spikes teased his eyes, as he crawled on blackened hands and knees for a closer look. She plucked a handful of pale yellow daisies in her tiny fist and shoved them towards the nearest pair of wings. "Dinner time, Mrs. Butterfly!" she giggled. The flash of orange and gold ignored her generous offer and alighted on a nearby blueberry bush. She crept, back bent, toes pointed, hands cupped and palms outward facing, until with a froggish leap and a shrill battle cry she pounced on the unsuspecting bug. She peered closely inside her dark hands, giggled at the tickling sensations, then spun around in obvious glee to race home to show her mother.

He crouched in a snap when she turned his way, but she spotted the tufts of hair jutting from the grass and rushed towards him, plopping next to him cross-legged. "Look, Cloud. Look what I got!" She stuffed her balled fist under his nose, and he pressed his eye between her two thumbs for a better look. It was too dark to see anything, but he could feel the wings jostling his eyelashes and he laughed.

"Isn't she pretty?"

He placed his eye against her hand again, but still saw nothing. "Yeah."

She smiled. "I'm gonna take her to Mama."

"How you gonna keep her?"

"In a jar in my room. Mama says everything needs air, so I'll have to get someone to cut holes in it. Mama says I'm too young to do it myself." She gave him an appraising look, then broke into a wide grin. "You can do it! You're older so it'll be easy."

He shrugged and fiddled nervously with a blade of grass between his lips, producing a long whistle.

"Ooh! I wanna try!"

She tried picking grass with her closed fists, huffing in frustration at her lack of success. Suddenly she brightened. "Hold out your hands."

"What?"

"Come on, give me your hand. You can hold Margaret while you teach me."

"What?"

"Come on!"

"Oh...okay." He flattened his hands before her, and she nested hers between his, depositing their precious cargo in the well of his palms. The little butterfly preened, flexed its wings, then trailed along the veins of his hand.

"See! She likes you. Now teach me to whistle." She yanked a fistful of grass up by the roots and stuck one in her mouth.

She puffed out her cheeks and blew, and Cloud squinted when a mouthful of spit landed on his face. "Gross," he muttered, but he smiled when she giggled. "Don't blow so hard. And hold it tight between your thumbs."

She dutifully picked out another blade and stretched it taut between her fingers. It squeaked, then petered out, but she grinned at him. The second and third times lasted a little longer, until she finally managed a decent whistle, somewhere between the twentieth attempt and the time he lost count.

Cloud watched her with Margaret tucked securely within his grasp, until her mother called her for dinner. He carefully handed back her pet, and she skipped home, but not before eliciting a promise from him to come visit Margaret and help make her home tomorrow.

"Okay," his face reddened and nodded, as they each stepped into their respective homes.

At the dinner table, his mother asked him what he had done that day, after scolding him for playing with his soup.

He slurped another splattering spoonful from his bowl, lowered his eyes at the disapproving glance his mother shot him, and swallowed. "Made a new friend," Cloud declared with determined solemnity.

His mother smiled, but it was strained at the seams. "Who, dear? You already know everybody at school."

"Margaret."

"Margaret?"

"Yep. We named her Margaret."

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_He can hear them knocking on his crystal cage. They tap._

_There's Feeding Time._

_And Watching Time._

_And White Time, and No Time._

_Knock, knock._

_Who's there? _

_What time is it?_

_What-time-is-it Who? _

_The only answer is the draft of air that chills him. And a great bright light that brings nothing but pain._

_But in case you're wondering..._

_It's supper time._

_They're here to serve him up rare._

**XXXX**

When he opened his eyes, she was already awake, staring at him. He was up like a shot, his feet tangled in the sheets, almost tripping him on the floor. She giggled and smiled, and he stared.

And stared.

And stared.

Should he talk to her? What could he say? He opened his mouth a few times to fool it into speaking, but nothing came out.

And they were still staring.

_'An angel?'_

No, saying that would just be dumb.

**XXXX**

"Hi Cloud, you wanna see something cool?" Her voice was exuberant, while her lips resisted against the pull of her teeth and tongue.

He lifted his shoulders and tugged on his ponytail. "I guess."

She grinned, revealing a huge gap between her top front teeth. "I lost it last night," she clarified, "And if I put it under my pillow, Mama says I'll get a gil from the tooth fairy."

"That's no big deal," he scoffed. "I got a gil last week."

She pouted and stamped her hands on her hips. "For what!" she exclaimed.

"Dunno. Chores. I get another one tomorrow."

"Yeah, well, I have a whole lotta teeth I can pull out. You just wait, Cloud Strife!"

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe._

_Catch a soldier by his toe._

_If he hollers, make him pay..._

_..._

_Someone screams._

**XXXX**

"Who are you?"

"Tifa."

"Nice to finally meet you, Tifa. I'm--"

"Cloud. I know."

"You do?" he blinked, incredulous.

She smiled. "Sure. I've always known you."

**XXXX**

His legs had just grown long enough to climb the well. His mother disapproved of it, what with all those teenage hooligans hanging around the place. But for Cloud, the well was a siren call luring him ever closer with the sticky promise of sight. From his lofty twenty-foot perch, he could see more than he ever had, could ignore the dewdrop heads of the bullies below to carry himself further and further into the distance. Look! It's Mr. Dunne's inn. There's the butterfly field! And over there is my house, and Tifa playing in her room! Hi, Tifa, he waved, though he said nothing. He sat on the wooden ledge, and swinging his legs back and forth, peered at the horizon. He thought that if he squinted really hard--really, really hard-- he might spy the ocean, or Midgar, with its newly built spires and its streets of hardened steel and stone (not gold, he wasn't stupid). He wondered how many men it took to build a city like that, how many heroes it took to defend it. Probably a million, or maybe just ten really, _really_ good ones, with dark professional fatigues (the scary kind), and a massive blade of metal glinting in the sun. He wouldn't smile, SOLDIERs never smiled, not in pictures anyways, but maybe he'd rescue an old lady from a burning building or a princess from a tower. And he'd call his mom and Tifa and they'd come out and greet him and he'd smile for them. And Tifa'd kiss him on the cheek, because anywhere else was just gross, and she'd have a real life hero to protect her. And then the two of them would go to the ocean because heroes have to get a weekend off sometimes, right?

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_I before e except after c, like in receive. But not in Cloud Strife. _

_Don't separate pa from his rat. _

_Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November._

_These are important things to remember at a time like this. He'd hate to look stupid._

_Square root of an odd number is still odd. Square root of -1 is i._

_He guesses he fits in there somewhere._

**XXXX**

**"**Why didn't you talk to me when I called to you through the window?"

"If I had you would've never opened the door."

"Huh?

" I don't...understand."

"Me neither."

**XXXX**

"Please stand up, Mr. Strife."

"M--me, ma'am?" A snicker or two erupted behind him.

"Yes, would you come to the board for math exercises?"

"I...uh..."

A much larger hand than his own slapped him on the back, doubling him over on his desk. "Go on, runt." A few of the older boys laughed as he stumbled to the front of the room.

Mrs. Dalloway peaked her fair brows over the flat rim of her glasses and pointed a short, chalky finger at the board. "341+6979."

"Yes, ma'am." He dutifully fisted one piece of white chalk and started to add, remembering to line up the numbers and carry the one, when he felt something hit the back of his head. He whirled and carded his fingers through his spikes. A group of the bigger boys sat in the back sniggering behind open books and raised fists. He had just turned back to the problem when something else hit him, and this time he could hear a few girls giggling, too.

"Mr. Strife. The class does not need another clown. Please finish the problem and return to your seat."

"Yes, ma'am."

He carved the seven onto the blackboard, wiped his hands on his pants, and maneuvered through the books and bags and shoes back to his seat, until one of those shoes caught him and sent him sprawling on the wooden floor.

The class erupted in laughter and the teacher screamed at him that he'd have clean-up duty during lunch. His knees were killing him, but he bit back the tears and dared a look with reddened eyes to where some of the younger kids sat, and saw her. She smiled at him, barely, but her eyes were sad, disappointed almost, in having such a weak baby for a neighbor.

He scrabbled for his seat and passed the rest of the lesson drawing stupid stick figures with stupid spiky hair and then scribbling over them because they were just stupid.

The bell for lunch rang, and he slowly slid his books inside his bag, while the boys smacked him in the back of the head and whispered, "Way to go, retard."

The teacher muttered something about cleaning the erasers, and he nodded, folding his head in his hands when he heard her leave the room.

"Hey, Cloud," a sweet voice lifted his head and he dropped his hands to spy a reserved smile and Tifa cautiously shifting her books from one hand to the other. "I'm sorry about what Johnny did to you. It was mean."

His blood boiled in embarrassment and impotent fury at his lack of reaction, at his inability to fight back in front of _her_. "It's okay. They're just stupid." His hands balled together, grinding against the table.

"You want help?"

He almost jumped in his seat, but she was still there, smiling at him. "I--uh, yeah, sure."

He walked over to the window and heaved it open, while she retrieved the erasers. They each grabbed a pair and clapped them vigorously over the grass, as they leaned their heads back and tried to outwriggle the cloud of dust that snuck in under the half-closed pane. He knocked his eraser hard against hers, and white mushroomed from the felted blocks. With a gleeful yelp, she turned and ducked in an attempt to avoid the persistent onslaught, but got caught in the middle and let out a violent round of sneezes. She smeared her hand across her nose, and he laughed at the white mustache streaking over her mouth.

"You wanna come over to play later?" she asked with a small smile, as the dust finally cleared. "Johnny'll be there, but he'll stop picking on you once he sees how nice you are."

Nice, he thought. Not strong or cool or tough like the older boys; so he shrugged his shoulders and turned away. "Only stupid babies play games."

She looked shocked and hurt, but she nodded slowly and collected the last of the erasers in the tray. "Okay," she said, and the dejection in her voice almost broke his heart, but tough guys never went with their feelings, so he ignored it and shut the window. "If you change your mind, you can--"

"I won't," he interrupted gruffly. But when he saw the tears in her eyes, added, "I've got stuff to do, grown-up stuff."

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, Cloud." She slung her bag over her shoulder, grabbed her books, and with one more glance at him, walked out the door.

"Bye, Tifa," he whispered, longing after her retreating shadow through the lingering glint of suspended white.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Has he made SOLDIER yet? He's taken all the tests. No one ever told him war would be this bad. _

_But it is. It's a lot of metal and orders and the pain of having no control over what you do. _

**XXXX**

"Hey, Tifa?"

"What?"

"What did you want to be when you grew up?"

She blushed, "A mom. Or a nurse."

"Yeah, I can see that. You always took care of everybody."

**XXXX**

"Eat it, Strife." Robby Johnson, a twelve-year-old with more muscles than brains, yanked him up by the hair and dangled a squirming cockroach under his nose.

His face red with anger and fear, Cloud tried throwing elbows and fists at his captor, but met nothing but air. "Make me."

"Can do." Robby brought the hissing creature closer and closer to Cloud's face, while he sealed his lips between his teeth, praying the bully wouldn't pinch his nose and force him to swallow air and bug. He didn't bother to scream. They were on the far side of the schoolhouse, away from the teacher's lackadaisical eye and ear, and screaming would only earn him a harsher punishment later in the week.

"Hey, leave him alone!"

Both boys turned to see a petite seven-year-old in a checkered dress, hands on her hips and a disapproving scowl on her face.

"Stay out of this, Tifa."

"No!" she cried, stomping her foot. "I'm gonna tell the teacher on you."

"Shut up, baby."

"Leave her alone!" Cloud cried, thrusting his arms free and swinging them madly at the larger boy, who just scowled and pushed him into the dirt and said mean, nasty things about his mother that Cloud didn't understand, before walking away as the bell rang. Cloud sat on the ground and winced as he brushed away the rocks hidden within a bloody mess.

"You okay?" She crouched next to him, setting her chin on her knees and studying his injury.

"Yeah, I guess," he mumbled.

She blew on it, and the stinging on his skin lessened, as he felt all the blood rush from his legs to his cheeks. "That better?"

He nodded and pushed himself to his feet, declining her hand when she offered him help. "We better get back to class."

He limped back into the room with her by his side and took his seat in silence.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Do re mi ti la. It's a song he knows. She used to play it. Who? Somebody. Duh. Do re mi ti la do re do. Her song was pretty, his isn't. Not then, not now. It screeches in skreighs and metallic sheens. A broken violin, nails on the chalkboard. The bleating, bleeding swan song of another red blood cell biting the dust. _

_The rest of him hangs on, tooth and nail, clawing down that chalkboard. The song that drowns out the rest. _

_Pump up the volume. Do re mi ti la._

_He'll march to that tune. The angelic song that will herald him home. _

**XXXX**

He awoke with a song in his head, and his mind someplace else. That room was bright and more earthy, wood lining the walls, a rug with a design out of a fairy tale on the floor, with silken strands so thick his feet sank deep, to the center of the world, and he thought he might never leave. A young girl's quilted bed occupied most of the room, but the focal point was a rather worn piano. It had obviously seen better days, even if the wood had few warps and splinters underneath the recent coat of polish someone had given it. He had never seen it that close up before, and it seemed wrong that it was silent when he had heard it singing majestically so many times from his spot underneath her window. The first time he heard it he had been outside, bouncing a brand new rubber ball that his mother had given him for his birthday; but when it had hit his shoe and hopped into the bushes of his neighbors' house, he had paused. Single notes drifted towards him, deliberately pressed with the utmost precision and concentration. The notes would travel higher, one at a time, then they would come back down. He sat on the grass and listened to them, waiting for them to carry him far away with a golden song. Every day he would come back, and every day his mother scolded him for the grass stains on the seat of his pants. "What are you doing outside, young man?" she would exclaim. But he shrugged and said he was sorry, and she smiled and told him it was okay; and the next afternoon he sat again under her window, eyes closed and ears open, and listened to her play. Eventually she had gotten faster, the scales dancing in the air: some classically quick, some mysterious and slow, some sweet and a little sad. She played songs, too. The first he recognized was 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.' He had hummed it to himself the entire next day at school and come home with scraped knees when a couple of the bigger boys had pushed him around for being a baby. He grit his teeth but never cried, and returned every day to his secret spot. The grass had long since stopped growing there, and his mother no longer bothered to fuss. He sat and listened while she learned harder songs--ones, he thought, that would be played in a grand concert hall with hundreds of people dressed up like kings and queens to bask in her music. Sometimes she would stop playing and he could hear her mother correcting her fingering. "Five, three, one, four, one, dear," she would say. He didn't know what that meant, but he decided it was a secret code, one that helped her unlock the music. She had to play with the keys a little at first, but with that code she soon played faster and smoother and more beautiful than ever. His favorite song was the one she played the most. It sounded different, depending on her mood, or if she played it as a duet with her mother or by herself. It always sounded best when she was alone, like it was her song, played just for her and the little boy who adored her from afar.

Rubbing his fist over his eyes, he slipped his feet onto the floor and tossed aside the covers. His hair felt even more unruly today as he tried to comb through it, and he could hear her giggle at his attempts. "Chocobo head," she teased. He lifted half-lidded eyes and tried to look piqued, but she just laughed some more and returned to straightening the sheets on her bed, while a soft melody escaped her lips.

"Hey, what's that song?"

"Hmm?"

"The one you're humming. What's the name? I remember you playing it when we were little."

"Oh. I don't think it has a name. At least, I've never bothered with one. My mother taught it to me. It's my favorite."

"I like it," he said, flopping back down on his pillows.

She moved over to his bed and tugged on one of his spikes. "They're really wild in the morning, aren't they?"

He sat up quickly and smoothed his hands over his hair, blushing all the while. "I, uh, don't know."

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_If he hollers, he will pay_

_With fifty tortures every way._

_That man told him to be the very best one_

_But he was not it._

**XXXX**

"You know, when we were little, I never thought games were stupid."

She smiled the smug smile of a woman who understood how things worked. "I've known that for a while."

"You have?"

"Of course. You played tic-tac-toe."

**XXXX**

He had never been to a funeral before, not one that he remembered. They had held the service in the town square and filled it with flowers and people coming to pay their respects to Mr. Lockhart and his precious daughter. Cloud had never seen so many flowers before in his life. White ones that made his eyes itch and his nose run, and he kept sneezing throughout the funeral, while his mother hushed him with a handkerchief and the other adults frowned at him with dry, beady eyes. He held his mother's hand as they proceeded one after the other to view the body and shake hands with the grieving relatives.

Cloud had never seen a dead person before either. Mrs. Lockhart looked pale, ashen like a ghost, not warm and smiling like he had remembered her, and he hid his face in the folds of his mother's dress.

"We're so sorry for your loss," his mother said, grasping the hand of Tifa's father, as they gathered afterward in the Lockhart home. "If you need anything-- food, a babysitter--I'm right next door."

From the corner of his eye, Cloud saw him nod, but his gaze was glued on Tifa. She was gripping her father's hand tightly, while ignoring the people offering their sympathies.

He didn't say anything, not one word, and she didn't speak, either. But as he walked back to his house with his mother, he peered up at the endless sky and made a wish on the stars he knew were hiding behind the sun, a wish for her to be happy again. A wish that he would make her smile.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_This one's too hot._

_This one's too cold._

_This one's too straight, and that one's too screwy._

_But this one kills just right._

_Or so the man in white says._

_They've got him now. Hook, line, and sinker. Reel'm in, boys._

_Drown him._

**XXXX**

"So where is this place?"

"Here," she smirked.

He lifted one eyebrow at her. "Sorry. You used to always want me to tease you." He blushed, but she continued, "But I don't really know. I've pretty much always been here."

"Do you know anything about the lapses in my memory?"

"What do you remember exactly?"

"Nothing but my name," he stuttered but quickly corrected himself. "I mean, you're familiar. Like I know you, and I've remembered a couple of things. But nothing recent."

"I see." She stared at the great window, seemingly miles away, lost in her own thoughts. Her welcoming aura dimmed, like a gossamer screen had been thrown between them and he could only view her through its wiry grating.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"It's okay, Cloud. I think we still have some time."

He almost protested, but she held out her hand, and he accepted.

**XXXX**

It had taken him a few hours, but he finally knew how to do it. He carried a jar he borrowed from his mother, with holes in the lid he had punched in himself. He stepped over the gravelly path, clutching the present close to his chest and hoping it would cheer her up.

His heart raced as he knocked, timidly at first, then a little louder. His hands itched with anticipation as he waited on the front porch, and he alternately rubbed them on the ribbing of his shirt. After the ninth knock, the wooden door slowly creaked open to a small girl with red-rimmed eyes. Dumbfounded, she blinked at the small boy fidgeting on her doorstep, until he thrust the jar at her. "He--here."

She raised the glass to her eye to see a small yellow butterfly perched on a limp piece of grass. Tears welled in her eyes, and she choked, "Margaret?"

He frowned and tucked his head down, internally chastising himself for presenting her with a gift that had the opposite effect of what he had hoped. "Margaret II," he glanced back at her, grateful to see that tears hadn't started falling yet, "I think they're cousins."

She nodded and pressed her face against the jar for another inspection. The little butterfly had abandoned its post to waddle over a wilted daisy. "She's pretty. Thanks, Cloud."

He could feel his face heat furiously, but bobbed his head once before retreating towards his house. "Wait." He paused on the steps, as she shifted from foot to foot in the doorway. "Do you want to come in?"

His mouth gaped open and shut a few times, and he hiccupped. "I--"

"Johnny and them are here," she said, gesturing towards her room and the muted voices echoing down the stairs. "I know you don't like them, but maybe you could stay for a little while?"

A light blush bloomed across her cheeks at his continued silence, but as he crossed the threshold into her living room, he could have sworn he saw a faint smile, small but real nonetheless, drain away the sorrow in her eyes. "Come on. Let's go to my room."

They climbed the stairs and he wondered if it was wrong that he had never been so happy.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Oh god oh god oh god, they're going to cut him. He pulls with all his might at his restraints, but it barely makes them chink. Fuck, get it away. Go away. I'm not here. This is gone. God, what is he going to cut this time? No, don't use that. Shiva, anything but that. Please. Oh fucking...please, not there. I need that. _

_He bleeds._

**XXXX**

"There's been something bothering me."

"Hm?"

"Why didn't you open the door to let me out of here? Why'd you seal us both up?"

"It's not so bad here. Not with two."

"I don't know where I am!" he cried, tugging at his spikes. "This room makes me feel like I'm trapped, and...and you could see me trying to get out every day, and you still locked us both up. Why?"

She reached for his hand, clasping it between her palms while her thumbs rubbed circles over his knuckles. His breath escaped in ragged gasps, and he swallowed the useless desire to run away. "Because it's real bad out there. I know this room isn't so great, not like it used to be, but out there's a nightmare. I didn't want you to see that."

Her eyes flicked towards the window, but as her hands released his, she smiled and moved forward to cup his cheek. "Please. Just trust me."

Maybe it was the fact that she was the only one here, or his only friend, or perhaps the person who knew him best, but at that moment, visibly relaxed as he gave her a small smile, he decided he'd trust her with anything.

**XXXX**

He bent over her form. Smudge prints on her face. "Please, Tifa. Wake up." He ran his hand over her forehead like he was checking for fever. Was she too warm or too cold? "Please, just wake up now.

"Please wake up."

He had trusted her. She had been sure she'd find her Mama here. He never thought it would be this way. His head lay upon her heart and listened for a rhythm. Slow, faint, but he didn't know what someone else's heartbeat sounded like to compare. Maybe it was bad.

"Please, Tifa. If you need a new heart, you can have mine.

"Just please wake up."


	16. Buonanotte 2

**A/N:** Sorry about the small delay in posting. I was out of commission for a few days, and could barely move, much less write. But on a good note, there's only three more chapters left, and things will pick up a lot more either in the next chapter or the following, with the addition of a few more characters. I'm hoping to get this finished by the end of September, but I make no promises.

Thanks for reading.

* * *

_The mad scientist leans over him. All dark hair and lightning and maniacal cackles._

_Is he a monster now? Bolts out of his neck, stitches down his cheek, bile resurrecting his skin?_

_He doesn't know. He can't even check himself for a pulse._

**XXXX**

The bandages on his head had disappeared. He woke up one morning and they were gone, like they never really belonged to him in the first place. Someone else was just messing with his mind.

The ones over his heart, though, were still there. That damage was all his.

**XXXX**

Two men had shown up to rescue her. Later on he realized how bad it looked: his hand in her hand, his head to her chest. No tears, no rushing for help.

His mother dragged him away as the crowd grew larger. Women screamed worriedly, "Doctor! Doctor!" The older ones prayed. Her father yelled curses at him. A few people gossiped with crooked mouths, "What _was _she thinking? What was _he_ thinking?"

Her father scooped her into his arms and hurried back to the village, the doctor close at his heels.

The townspeople lingered for a bit, surveying the bridge with a low whistle, then pointed to the rocks below. One by one they moseyed back to their normal lives, but not without a curse for how much of a crying shame it was, the poor family.

He stood still, staring at the point on the bridge where he had let her fall. The whole thing seemed so surreal, with her unconsciously teetering on the verge of death, and his being virtually unscathed by the rest of the world. So when his mother tried to pull him back to town, he couldn't comprehend her actions. She inspected him for broken bones and ankle sprains, then whispered something about shock, the poor dear. That's why he hadn't gone for help.

She lied.

He had stayed because there were wolves in these parts. He would have fought them off for her until she awoke. But the others had come first, and they couldn't understand how her fall had been his, how her dream had almost killed his. How the wolves came, clouded in his imagination, but instead of eating her heart, they tore out his own and left it for carrion.

Rotten to the core.

----

----

----

----

_He resists the primal urge to scream._

_So he claws at the glass. _

_He wants to bang his head against a wall, but he doesn't._

_They're watching him, after all._

**XXXX**

They tell each other things.

Some with words: "I hate pickles;" "Cinnamon gives me a headache;" "Did you know that the nearest star is 2.3 light years away?"

"Huh?"

She blushed, "Read it once in a book."

He nodded, and they continued on, about hobbies and music and if he really thought 'poe-tay-toe/poe-tah-toe' was as dumb to him as it was to her. But it was the things said without words that really made an impression. Like how her touch could be so strong and so soft at the same time, or how she smelled like the freedom of a summer wind, or how he had always wanted to reach for her when the mimetic scars of a long-endured pain in his chest started acting up.

**XXXX**

He never took his eyes off her room as he limped past her house. A small crowd leaned against the door jamb, giving the family, oh, just enough space as they waited for the news, while others returned to the normal dreary boredom of Nibelheim. The gossips watched him from the corner of their vision, and their whispers dropped in pitch with their lips moving faster and faster. He could only imagine what they were saying.

But he didn't care. Tifa couldn't hear any of it.

When he finally pushed open his front door, his mother swept him into a tight hug. "Oh, my baby. My poor baby. I'm so glad you're okay." She was sobbing through her words, the effort of maintaining a public facade too overtaxing on her nerves. "Are you hurt too badly? Are you okay?" She moved her hands to examine his bloody knees, and he mumbled something under his breath. "Oh dear, we'll have to clean these."

He said nothing, just watched her move for the peroxide and the bandages. She held out her hand, beckoning him closer, and his stomach knotted at the familiarity of the action.

"What happened up there?" _Hold on, Tifa. Grab my hand._ "Why'd you go to the mountain?" _I want to see Mom._ "It's dangerous." _Many people have died there. Don't let go, I've got you._ "You know you can tell me anything." _Why'd you bring Tifa to a place like this?_ _What the hell's the matter with you? Please wake up, just please wake up. What if she dies?! _"Were you trying to impress Tifa?"

"No! Shut up!" he yelled. _Please wake up, please wake up, please wake up. Please don't die. None of this matters. _

The peroxide spilled from her hands, and his mother looked at him, shocked.

"I know it's been a rough day, but you will _not_ use that tone of voice with me, young man." Her voice was slow, quiet.

_I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Breathe in. Please wake up._

"Cloud, are you even listening to me?" It was louder now. And worried.

He looked at her through unspilt tears in his eyes, and ran to his room. The door slammed, the lock turned, and his mother banged, pleaded on the other side for him to talk to her, or at least to come eat something. But he cupped his hands over his ears and fell on his bed. _I don't care, I don't care, Tifa is hurt, just everybody shut up._

_Please, please, Tifa, wake up._

----

----

----

----

_How's he doing?_

_Oh, same old, same old._

_Back to the grind. Nose to the grindstone._

_Day in, day out._

_Lamb to the slaughter._

**XXXX**

"You know, I can barely remember what this room was like before you were here," he said as they sat on his bed one day. "Seems like a lifetime ago."

"Good," she mumbled into his shirt. "It's better now, anyways."

It was true, what people said: time flew when you were having fun. Or at least when you weren't alone.

**XXXX**

The whole school was in whispers for a week. Whispers of: Do you think she'll die?, Why do you think she went there?, Do you think he did it? Whispers that started as mere rushes of breeze between two desks, but grew into tremendous thunder as the week drew on, and stares grew braver. Cloud knew they were looking at him from behind their books, pretending that when they talked about him, he wasn't there. Even the teacher ignored him in the classroom, calling on this-that-or-the-other student to try problem number three in your texts, please. For a week he took his lunch far away from the school grounds, away from the teacher's supervision, and no one stopped him. And in the afternoons he trudged home and buried his head in his hands at the spot near her window where he used to listen to her play piano. He'd sit there until his mother called him inside for dinner, where he'd pick at his food, then trundle off for bath and bed.

But on the seventh day after the incident, rumors erupted at lunch that Tifa had woken up. He dropped his sandwich and ran home, faster than he had ever run before. His scabbed knees cracked and leaked blood down his shins as they pushed themselves to the edge, and he winced in pain, but never slowed. On her front porch, there was a crowd gathered around the doctor as he fielded questions from the curious neighbors. Cloud ran straight to his spot underneath her room and stood on his tiptoes to determine if he could see any signs of life. The curtains fluttered through the open window, and he could detect the baritone whisper of her father as he mumbled his thanks to some god. A small childish cough hiccupped through the air, and Cloud thought it might have been the best sound he had heard in a long time. Her father mumbled something more about resting up, as a door clicked shut and Mr. Lockhart tromped downstairs through the well-wishers clapping him on the back or half-hugging him, to set a cardboard box by the trash can.

When the crowd slowly filtered into the Lockhart's living room, Cloud knew he should return to school. But as he brushed the twigs off his backpack from where he had thrown it on the ground, he was struck by a curious glint blinding him from the top of the box. He nudged both flaps fully open to reveal a unmoving yellow butterfly trapped in a jar, starved and suffocated under a mound of clutter. He frantically worked the lid open and stuffed some grass and flowers inside, but Margaret II never responded. She lay buried under the gifts from her rescuer, her salvation nothing more but dead weight.

He dropped the jar into the box and ran into his room, despite his mother's ragged demands for him to return to school, or simply talk to her.

But he only wanted to be alone and had no place else to go. He couldn't stay in town, and leaving wasn't an option. Nibelheim was surrounded by mountains and fields, both chock-full of reminders that heroes never failed in fairy tales, and that when angels fell from the clouds, they were supposed to sprout wings and fly.

----

----

----

----

_His life feels like a B-movie horror flick._

_They shoot him up with these green amoebic blobs that zoom through his blood vessels engulfing anything in their path._

_And they grow, and grow, and the President yells, 'Send in the SOLDIERs!', and they come in and slice and dice, but the ooze keeps growing and there's something strange in the way he explodes and the blob just eats and eats and doesn't give a flying fuck about moderation._

_And then the audience leaves, cursing the fact that they overpaid._

**XXXX**

He wondered how he ever managed before, when he didn't wake to see her dark hair flared out upon the bed next to him, or the way she moaned to shake off the long, lingering fingers of sleep, before she compromised and snuggled in for a few more minutes.

His favorite thing, though, was when they talked, or she smiled and held his hand, and her eyes shifted increments along the color palette. Red to ruby to carnelian, and he thought he was getting close.

**XXXX**

When she finally returned to school, Tifa didn't smile her real smile for a whole day. If it were him, he wouldn't have been smiling either, having to sit still and pay attention and do his homework. But Tifa was a good student, so he didn't think she should be all that miserable about attending their humdrum school.

It was the attention, he thought, making her so unhappy. Everyone crowded around her, asking if she were all right, vying to see her yellowed bruises, competing for her company at lunch.

He wondered how it could be that these friends of her didn't know her. She had come back from the dead, and everyone said she was _so _lucky, except she couldn't even smile.

And a part of him shriveled, withered like the ashen dust off Margaret's wings, when he concluded that it was--he was positive-- probably all his fault.

----

----

----

----

_His heart has been in the blender for a while now. Maybe always? He doesn't know. But Pulse sounds familiar. _

_There's Chop; he knows that one, too._

_Whisk, he also recognizes. Turn, turn, turn. _

_Puree sounds funny to him, like primordial pea soup. Which he hates, but it's better than the other options._

_He thinks they're going to mix it up now. Okay, he'll bite. At least that one's doable. Sounds sort of like a party._

_Not like Crush, the setting he fears the most._

_That one sounds like heartache and hammers and broken dreams. Or a sixty-ton weight dropped on you, and you lay there flat as a pancake, but for some reason you don't die._

_Whatever. _

_He won't have to worry about that one quite yet. They always save the best for last._

**XXXX**

Red.

One of his walls was red.

She was painting it.

With a paintbrush and a bucket, not even a stray fleck to require a drop cloth.

He swung around to look at the still-locked door, before he groaned and buried his head in his hands. When he finally peered up, she was looking at him curiously, paintbrush poised upon a spot of crimson.

"What's going on here?" he finally asked.

"Painting. It seemed like time for a change."

"Painting," he deadpanned. "But...how?"

She smiled and got back to work, "They were sitting by the wall when I got up. There's another brush over here, if you want to help."

He walked over to her, and lifted the brush. It felt solid and real in his hands, as did the paint when she smeared a liquid line down his cheek. He frowned, "Did someone bring these here?"

"Impossible. No one can get through that door if it's locked."

"So it just showed up." He massaged his eyes with his hand and tried to think. Nothing made sense here.

"It's okay, Cloud. It's just the way this place works. Besides, it's not like this room can't use a little life, anyways."

**XXXX**

Her father asked her to play the piano once, specifically her mother's favorite song. Cloud knew because he heard it as he crouched under her window. She had only picked up the hobby again a few days ago, and when he had come home from school one afternoon to the sounds of her pecking the chords of _their_ song, he dropped everything on the porch to race to his reserved seat by the side of the house. The keys were slower, a little more unsure than they had been a few weeks ago, and reflected a tinge of sadness, where before they had only spoken of hope and beauty.

But perhaps it was too late for that. Too late for childish whims and chasing butterflies. Too late for falls that resulted in scraped knees and colorful band-aids. Too late for the innocence of childhood, when he could pretend he could be the best without fighting for it.

For the first time, he didn't listen to her play. He couldn't bear the inevitable disappointment.

He wouldn't stand there and listen to her cry.

----

----

----

----

_They're nailing him into the scenery._

_His lungs hang from hooks on the ceiling._

_Intestines curtain his legs._

_His spleen makes an attractive accent for someone's desk._

**XXXX**

It might have seemed strange to an outsider, if those even existed, how fast he adapted to his surroundings. It was a survival tactic that he must have picked up somewhere and used quite often, even if, in this case, the need had not arisen from a particular sense of danger.

He didn't quite understand the mechanics, or his acceptance of it, but it seemed like the room anticipated his needs and accommodated them. Like how his bedspread had turned dark green one morning, while his walls were currently being painted in various colors; and there was a plant growing happily in one corner in a gilded pot atop a cherry wood floor. He had no sense of style, but he thought it looked okay, and she never said anything.

The only complaint he had was that he couldn't seem to manage a cover for the window.

**XXXX**

"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

Two boys shoved each other amidst a crowd of chanting, fist-pumping grade-schoolers. Ferocity brewed in both warriors' eyes as they circled one another. They sidestepped here and there for a quick jab or a sweeping kick. Cloud threw his fist at the other boy, a lanky kid named Roger, who leaned out of the way just in time and tucked over to tackle him to the ground. They rolled over, sweating and kicking, while Cloud struggled to free his arms from the other boy's grip.

"Say it," Roger growled, thrusting Cloud's head into the dirt.

He spit out a mouthful of mud into his attacker's eye with a cry of "Never!" before twisting his right arm out of Roger's clutches and angling his elbow at the kid's nose. A crack was heard over the gasps of the crowd, and Cloud pushed Roger backwards to mix blood and dirt.

He scrambled to his feet, lording over the writhing boy who was clutching his nose just underneath the gush of blood. "Say it."

"Whamph?"

"Say it."

"Mm--"

"Mr. Strife!" Through the rush of adrenaline, he hadn't noticed the crowd scattering at the approach of a very angry Mrs. Dalloway. He quickly stepped aside as she bent down to help Roger to his feet, still tilting his head back and groaning. "What is going on here, young man?" she demanded.

"Nothing, ma'am," he mumbled.

"Roger?"

He shook his head no, echoing Cloud's statement.

Their teacher puckered her wrinkly face, and harsh, glaring lines chiseled into her forehead. The boys shrank back involuntarily and gulped. "You can both explain this 'nothing' to your parents as soon as we get him help."

She hauled them back to the school by the collars of their shirts, to place a call to a doctor and pass a sentence of two weeks' suspension. Cloud's mother had scolded him with tears in her eyes, before enveloping him in a tight hug. He couldn't return it, wishing only that she hadn't touched him in the first place.

----

----

----

----

_They've carved him up into chop suey and dumped him into the river green. He can feel himself floating, well, his head at least. His liver--he's sure--is sunk. And his appendages were probably routed to parts unknown, or at least they don't work for him anymore._

_They're expendable, unlike his head. He struggles to keep that afloat, even if it means breathing in the miasma that bowls in like a flabby fog, swallowing everything on its plate, gumming at his seams, slobbering with a languorous lick the bits that fall on the table as it smacks and asks for the salt. Which, any good taxidermist knows, is the purest and most tried-and-true way to preserve him. _

_He just figured they'd wrap him up first._

**XXXX**

She crawled into bed with him one day. Nothing serious, or risqué, just one friend embracing another, with her head on his chest, ebbing up and down with his breathing.

His heart was racing double, triple overtime, and it shouldn't have been, he thought. They were beyond familiar with each other. Instead of the window, they now had a whole history between them, memories of a past forever corded together.

Still, he knew they both had always been shy, or somehow she had become a lot braver than he remembered.

No, that wasn't right.

She had always been willing to take on the world.

**XXXX**

Late at night, when most children had retreated to their rooms to agonize over their homework, he would watch her sneak out of her house. He hadn't meant to follow her the first time; he was merely out to enjoy the tranquility of nightfall from his favorite spot in Nibelheim. But when he turned the corner to the well, he saw her already there, death-gripping the rungs as she attempted again and again to raise her foot to the next step. He concealed himself in the shadows and watched as she eventually stopped and, breathing heavily, clung to her spot about a third of the way to the top, before sighing and feeling her way back to terra firma. She returned to her house without a sound, and he scaled the wooden mass to its peak, wondering what it was she had longed to see.

A few nights later, she was back, positioned two steps higher than her previous apex. He didn't have time to hide from the gentle moonlight before she turned and spotted him. Her mouth gaped open, and with less ginger motions than those he had seen, returned to the ground.

She brushed off her clothes and tried to walk home with a nonchalant greeting of, "Evening, Cloud," the syllables muffled at the end while she chewed on the insides of her cheeks.

"Hey," he replied as equally unaffected, and she whirled around to face him.

"You won't tell, will you?" Even in the subtle evening glow, he could tell her eyes were wide and nervous. "Papa'd kill me, and the other kids would just laugh if they knew I was scared." She fidgeted with the large pockets on the front of her dress, until he nodded and swore he wouldn't tell a soul. Cross his heart, he wouldn't.

She sighed and half-smiled her thanks before slipping inside her house. He waited until he could see the light in her room flicker on before he lifted himself onto the well's top platform. By his count she had made nine steps today. She still had a ways to go.

He shadowed her every night after that for two weeks and couldn't help but smile when she finally, _finally_ reached the top. For all that had happened the last few months, he had almost resigned himself to a life without hope. But despite losing almost everything, she had held on, had reached the summit to wave her proud flag, and the faith he had buried somewhere deep inside himself under bandages and broken moth wings, peeped out from behind his eyes at the promise of another chance.

And so it was extra early when he climbed the well the next night to surprise her once she arrived; but an hour later, the light was still on in her room, and the wind had grown cold, and he resigned himself to the fact that he had tried to follow her a day too late.

----

----

----

----

_There was a constant eye on him. He could feel it. _

_Watching and waiting and never ever caring. Just biding its time like a patriotic recruiting poster until he turned of age._

_Then they could take him out back and shoot him._

_It was rather like the screaming of the thousand souls in his bloodstream. _

**XXXX**

He'd come to expect her presence in his bed in the morning. Except as the hours she spent there grew longer until she never even mussed the other sheets, he began to call the bed _theirs_. And with the warm wash of her breath on his cheek, and the way she snuggled into his side, how could he have ever thought it had been built for less than two?

**XXXX**

He never even got in trouble the first time he won a fight.

He simply walked away, unconcerned about the boy who raved with idle words because he had no other shot at victory.

Let the dumbbutt shout all he wants. Those bruises were going to speak loud enough in the morning, anyways.

----

----

----

----

_It's a game._

_A big fucking game. All the players are ready, itching for the cue._

_His head caroms from side to side, but the bumpers do nothing to stop him from falling._

_Eight ball in the corner pocket._

_Oh, yeah. A straight shot. Sunk it._

_Double or nothing? _

_Sure thing. _

_Rack him. _

**XXXX**

They were nailing photographs of mountains and oceans and the sky to the wall, when Cloud hit his thumb with the hammer. He smirked and repeated it for Tifa, who simply shook her head and smiled. "It would have been so cool," he started, picking up another nail, "if it had been like this in Nibelheim. That Johnny kid really did a number on me a couple of times."

Her expression changed, and she placed the nail on the floor. "Johnny never beat you up, Cloud."

"What? Yeah, he did. Tripped me up in school, picked on me, kicked me around sometimes."

She shook her head, and a strange fury erupted in him. "But he did!" he countered. "And you were disappointed because I was too weak and scared to do a goddamn thing about it."

She closed her eyes and swallowed. "No, I wasn't. And he didn't. It was a dream, Cloud. Nobody ever really bullied you back then."

"No! No...that's not right. Nibelheim hated me. All the adults and the bullies, they..."

"You got in a lot of fights later on. And people did say mean things about you, but you were always so alone. Johnny was just a bad dream." She padded over to where he had started pacing worriedly along the floor, and pulled him into her arms, even as his muscles tightened and his breathing skipped.

"A dream..." he whispered. "Am I crazy?"

"No. No, you're not. " She brushed the bangs away from his forehead, and he slumped a little further against her. "You're just confused."

He pulled away an almost imperceptible distance and turned his face. "About you, too?"

The initial silence was unbearable, but when her answer came, her tone was soft. "I don't know. But," she paused, tilting his chin back towards her with a soft thumb, "we can find out, right?"

He gulped. "I guess."

Her gentle smile returned, and he eased back closer to her. "Sure we can. Besides, it's probably okay. You already knew me at the window. Anything different would have struck you as weird." She coaxed him to bed and gently laid his head in her lap. "We'll be alright, you'll see.

"I promise."

**XXXX**

He thought she could do so much better than the friends she chose to chase around town, or race to one of the old creeks some summer afternoons.

While those other boys were still asleep, or doing their homework, Cloud was training in the mountains. The steep trails provided the perfect secluded paths to build stamina, and fallen trees and rock outcrops fostered agility. Five hundred pull-ups on an isolated branch augmented his strength, while speed came with the territory.

It was through the fist fights, though, that he sharpened his instincts. She needed a man, not the scrawny boys who monopolized most of her time.

Give him a couple of years, and a few more inches, and maybe he could fill those shoes.

Hah, he laughed bitterly to himself. As if she would ever look his way.

----

----

----

----

_Forty ECG waves a minute, and falling, falling._

_Somebody do something quick!_

_Twelve ccs of the green, stat!_

_I'm not giving up on you yet. Breathe, goddammit, breathe!_

_He coughs._

_A rueful sigh. Get me the other one. This one's no good._

_Practically a failed experiment. The best we can hope for is a Control. _

**XXXX**

Her outfit had changed during the night. It was a whisper of the skies he remembered from his boyhood, and beautiful, even if the dye seemed less than a shade away from the forgotten color of his eyes.

He didn't know why he didn't ask her for the name, except a part of him feared she wouldn't know, and the loss of hope would crush him forever.

Reminiscing about the past was so much easier, anyways. Since, you know, talking had never really been his thing.

**XXXX**

"Mr. Strife, there has been a dramatic drop in your grades recently."

He lifted his head from his desk, hardly following his teacher's rambles during a mandatory after-school conference. He shot the old bag a listless glance before focusing on a pickup game of kickball between Tifa and her friends on the great field beyond the outskirts of town.

"I've already spoken to your mother about this," she continued, "and she's just as concerned as I am that you won't pass the seventh grade."

It was Tifa's turn, and with the same ease she demonstrated at everything she undertook, she sailed a high ball straight to right field and rounded the bases, her dark hair trailing behind her like a train of silk, and it looked like she was laughing, and he thought---

"Mr. Strife! Please pay attention. You're never going to amount to anything in life with grades like these." She extolled the merits of diligence and hard work in scholastic pursuit, and when she finally dismissed him, he snatched up his report card and stalked off to the well, where he could easily see the game from the best seat in Nibelheim. Or Midgar, he thought, clinching the paper within his fist.

He'd show that nosy, know-nothing teacher someday. He'd show them all.

He was going to be somebody great.

Or at least, better than them.

----

----

----

----

_He's different from what he once was. There's a genuine purity that is lost when one sees the world through a radioactive glow._

_The fallout blankets him in its mushroom cloud, and he thinks it's funny how the counter springs to life at precise instance of his fissile collapse into darkness. _

**XXXX**

"Is it just me, or are your eyes changing color, too?"

She dropped the hand she was holding and studied her reflection in the window. "No, they've always been that color."

"They were never red?"

"Hm, I don't think so." She shrugged and walked back to the bed, "Maybe it was a trick of the light."

He nodded.

**XXXX**

He no longer sat in his spot to listen to her play. He currently leaned against the wall of his house, one foot propped up at the bottom, his head resting against the cool stones. Sometimes people would walk by, and he would glare at them, before they ran up to her room. Through the open window, he could hear them ask, "What's he doing out there every day?" And every day she would say nothing, until a long pale arm extended out the window to shutter it closed.

But he never really minded that much. When she resumed playing for her friends, her song somehow became less melodic, less reflective of her as a person. It was still well executed, no doubt, but it lacked the feathery grace with which it danced when she played it for only him and her.

She never complained, but he thought she knew it, too.

----

----

----

----

_Blood Count: Unknown._

_Blood Pressure: Irrelevant._

_Temperature: Ooh, ooh, that's easy! I know, I know! Pick me!_

_It's Fahrenheit 101: The temperature at which his sanity burns._

**XXXX**

"Cloud? When we were little, did you ever want to be something other than a SOLDIER?"

He shifted his head thoughtfully downward for a moment, before shaking it. "No, I don't think so." He paused here, then started, "Although--" before stopping again to fumble with the blankets. But at her gentle urging, he sighed. "Okay, but you can't repeat this."

"I swear."

"Cross your heart?"

"Cross my heart."

"When I was little, I mean _real_ little, I wanted to be an action figure."

"You _what_!"

He shrugged. "I used to try to fool my toys into thinking I was asleep. I sorta figured they went on secret missions at night."

"Well, okay, but an action figure?"

He smirked. "You never saw mine. One guy had this really kickass motorcycle."

**XXXX**

_Wutai-- In a move triumphed as 'from one of the greatest tactical minds Gaia has ever produced,' General Sephiroth has once again led Shin-Ra forces to victory. Wutains had flanked an entire platoon, when the General arrived and decimated the enemy on their own soil, while rallying war-weary Shin-Ra troops to victory. The siege on the capital puts further pressure on the royal Kisaragi family, who has repeatedly challenged Shin-Ra authority and worldwide mako supplies._

The newspaper included a full-page picture of Gaia's greatest hero on the steps of a taken temple.

Go figure that the General was the talk of the town the next day.

His teacher had even assigned an essay on what made a hero. She had given his class a week, but he had procrastinated, and now, nine o'clock the night before it was due, he had only his name, the date, and the title copied in perfect penmanship at the top of the page.

Twenty previous attempts filled with drawings of warriors slaying mighty dragons, or noble wolves glaring out of the paper, or really awesome sets of wheels zooming off for adventure, littered the black mesh lining of his waste basket. Folding his arms over his latest page, he rested his head, determined not to doodle any more until he at least had _something _written.

But what?

What really made a hero? He had never met one, so how could he be sure? He only knew of Sephiroth, and, he mused bitterly, his own failed attempt to rescue Tifa.

Maybe that was it, then.

He quickly jotted his idea down, then embellished it with a few more paragraphs about Sephiroth and SOLDIER and the mighty exploits of heroes he had heard as a kid. And when he was done, he tossed it in his bag with a quick plea that his teacher wouldn't notice his handwriting growing at an increasingly not-so-subtle rate as he raced to fill two pages, before he cleaned up for the night. A 'B+' paper probably, if Mrs. D didn't nail him about the length.

At least he hoped so. His idea was solid.

_'I think a hero is someone who is strong enough to fight the whole world for something important.'_

----

----

----

----

_They've taken to knocking him out beforehand. Come on! Come on, and fight me!, he wants to shout._

_But when he opens his mouth, they've already packed a wallop. The one-two punch to his chest, and a needle he thinks stops his heart._

**XXXX**

Sometimes he wondered what his life would be like if she left. Those were the nights he awoke in the cold-steel feeling of sweat pressed to his face, and he would panic about the door until her lissome limbs would twist around him and bring him back to her. He would drown against her hair, while she coiled fingers through his own.

And in the morning, he would never speak of it. Just grabbed her hand, and she understood and let him be.

She must have known how those dreams could be so frightfully real, that he feared it would only take a word before they came true.

**XXXX**

"Say it."

He had his forearm pressed against the guy's struggling, gasping throat.

"Say it," Cloud repeated again, enunciating more slowly this time.

"S--sc--screw you," Jenkins managed, even as he flailed to free his neck from the steadily building pressure of Cloud's elbow.

Cloud smirked, then aimed a fist at the boy's head. "Wrong answer," he said, but he dropped his hold, before raising himself to his feet. Jenkins's hands flew to his throat, and he gulped air greedily. "Get up and fight then."

"What?" the still red-faced Jenkins wheezed.

"Fight, dammit!" he launched himself, kicking his opponent back before landing a left hook to his jaw. Jenkins stumbled a few steps, then countered with his own jab that connected solidly with his eye. The follow-up punch Cloud blocked, using the change in momentum to knock the wind out of the black-haired boy.

Cloud could feel the blood oozing from his bottom lip and his face beginning to swell, but he nevertheless steeled a formidable glare at his downed schoolmate. "Say it," he commanded, with knuckles poised at Jenkins's temple.

The fallen teen blinked and stuttered a few times before finally coughing out, "Mercy," at which Cloud shoved him back into the dirt for good measure, before limping off towards the well.

----

----

----

----

_The things they do to him make him think of origami. Take something, fold it this way, then that way. Stand it in a case for all to see. Not the natural order of things, frozen in space like that, stuck in a shape that means something to somebody or nothing to nobody._

_Even if he manages to unfurl himself and return to his original form, the scars of the creases will always be there, ready to bend him back out of shape with the slightest pressure._

_It's the price he pays in this still life. They say pain is beauty. They could be wrong. But he definitely knows they were right when they said that artists were always a little eccentric._

**XXXX**

After painting had stopped for the day, and rearranging had ceased, they would curl together on his bed, he resting on a pillow, she supported by his chest. He loved the sighs that slipped through satisfied lips when he tangled his fingers in her hair, or the way she shivered when he drew patterns on her back with a blunt fingernail. They played games that way. He would trace a word, and she would guess. Or he would draw wings, and she would smile and ask why.

He could have said something about an angel being the light and beauty in his life, but that sounded _unbelievably _corny, even if he didn't think she'd laugh _too_ hard; so he told her they were for freedom.

Because being caged wasn't so bad if you at least had the memory of flight.

**XXXX**

She had come to school distraught one day because her father was going to _kill _her. Her words exactly. She had lost an expensive pair of earrings by the creek the day before, when she had removed them to go swimming. As soon as school was out, she vowed she was heading straight there and combing the place until she found them.

And true to her word, the moment the final bell rang, she was off like a shot towards the outskirts of town. Cloud lingered around the school a bit, before dropping off his bag in his bedroom, then setting off for the local swimming spot. When he got there, he walked on by, heading to a nook above her on the mountain path to train and watch. She was carefully tiptoeing along the slippery rocks, while she searched high and low for her treasure. But with the approach of dusk, the growing shadows thwarted any hope she had of finding them, and she walked home, resigned to a stern lecture from her father about responsibility and the value of a gil...that was, if he noticed they were missing.

Cloud quit his routine early that night, going home for a flashlight before he returned. He didn't know why he did it--if she couldn't find them in the daylight, what chance did he have?--but he paced over and over those rocks, until, sometime close to midnight, he finally spotted a pearly gleam obscured by the root of a tree. He cursed his luck that it was only one, but he could barely keep his eyes open anymore, and he still had homework to do; so he returned home, clutching only half of his prize.

He went to school early the next day and placed it on her desk. When she arrived, she waved to her friends, and even welcomed him with a cheerful, "Hey Cloud, you're early today," before weaving towards her desk. She plopped her book bag down, the thump loosening the teardrop pearl until it clinked on the floor. Her startled gasp garnered a few turned heads, but she said nothing, while pocketing it and looking for the culprit. If she hadn't already been suspicious of his arrival time, the red blooming on the tips of his ears, even as he folded his head firmly within his arms on his desk, probably told her something was amiss. But she said nothing, and halfway through the morning's lessons, he thought maybe she never even considered him--not until lunch time, when she walked by him, tucking her hair behind her ear to reveal a lone earring and a shy smile. They exchanged no words, though, maybe because he looked away, or perhaps because he had found only one.

But it was still more than her friend Johnny had done. That punk kept giving him funny looks all day. He was probably jealous, or thought he stole it.

But it didn't matter. If Cloud were in his position, he might have thought the same thing.

----

----

----

----

_There's a marching band full of men who don't matter. They step, step, slide the hatch open, drum the food in, slide the door shut, step, step, bow out._

_It happens every day. Two times in musical harmony._

**XXXX**

When she laughed, or smiled, her eyes danced, but not in the way one would expect, with flickers and flames and chandeliers.

It was...different. Hers shone forth in glee, then stepped back to gauge his reaction, before swirling and dipping away into a fathomless pool. Almost like she was hesitant of something, testing the waters with a big toe before diving into the deep end.

But she wasn't searching for permission to laugh, or acknowledgment of her joy.

It was something far more subtle, more of a momentary succumbing to a niggling fear, pausing just for a bit to make sure he wasn't moping on the sidelines or waiting out this sweet little number.

**XXXX**

Upon the first hues of autumn, Nibelheim held its annual harvest festival, a custom supposedly tracing back to the ancient fertility rituals celebrating the gifts of the goddess. Why it wasn't observed in spring, or why anybody cared, Cloud didn't know, but no one questioned history in this village. The adults hung colorful lanterns around the town square and ribbons from the trees, and set up tables for food and cards. Neighbors and a few lost, bored tourists were encouraged to mingle and preserve the spirit of Nibelheim, while the children played games or wandered over to the dance floor.

His mother was currently being pestered once again by Mrs. Dixon for her soup recipe, information that was withheld year after year because his mother claimed that the Dixon woman would butcher a family secret, or usurp her prized position as soup maven of the mountain town. Cloud merely rolled his eyes at his mother, who snuck him a frustrated smile, before he shuffled closer to the main attraction.

Johnny and his friends were taking turns twirling Tifa around the dance floor, but none could match her grace, or footwork, judging by the number of times she bobbed from the pain of crushed toes.

She looked beautiful out there, even if Cloud was sure that she attended this thing to appease her traditional father, especially since Johnny was a huge idiotic bungler with the most annoying elf-with-a-cold laugh he had ever heard. But he kept his hands to himself--Cloud had to give him that--and he was her friend, which were the only two things that spared the redhead from a severe trouncing. But it still didn't mean that Cloud didn't trip him once or twice in the halls when his laugh was too loud or the temptation too great.

After one of the faster and more intricate folk dances concluded, Tifa wiped the beads of sweat from her brow as couples young and old waltzed onto the makeshift dance floor, which was nothing more than a street swept a little freer from dust. She scanned the perimeter for a new partner--a good one--or an exit, and caught his eye. In the dim lights, he thought she smiled faintly at his protective gaze, before her father whisked her away for the dance of honor.

His mother was still evading Mrs. Dixon's inquiries and making a beeline for the vanishing potato salad, so Cloud returned home alone. Tonight was as good a night as any to catch up on some sleep, what with the celebration being almost over, and those jerks too scared to try anything with the overprotective Mr. Lockhart nearby.

Besides, his training was always more effective early in the morning, warming him up from his fists to his feet for a long, dreary day at school.

----

----

----

----

_The bombs drop inside his skull. A whistle, growing louder and deeper, before a great silence. He doesn't even hear the sound waves from the blast, not when he's at the point of impact._

_The drop ship slips away for another round, another day. Another gil, another slaughter. Wanton destruction. You'd never guess it from the name, though._

_The sweetly innocuous label is tattooed on the side of the craft, the death star christened after somebody's Mother._

**XXXX**

The way her eyes lit up when he smiled, told him how much she enjoyed it, as if receiving one from him was the best gift she had ever gotten.

He blushed with the knowledge, but usually frowned at the conundrum it presented.

Sure, it was nice, but it wasn't fair. She deserved so much more than the occasional smile, especially since he wanted nothing more than to give her the world.

**XXXX**

It was the hardest thing he had ever tried to do, and he was no wuss. He almost wanted to skip it, except how was he ever going to deal with the screaming hordes of people and the pressures of military life, if he couldn't even write a simple note and leave it on her desk?

He had agonized over it the whole day--to tell, not to tell---despite the funny looks some of his classmates gave him, or the one his teacher did when she had caught him mumbling his quandary in his sleep mid-lecture. In the end, though, he decided to go with a straightforward and plain style, nothing eloquent or poetic. Merely a strong, courageous, blunt note asking her the question of the year. Or stating it, rather.

_Tifa, meet me at the well at 9 pm._

Ten copies later, he amended it to: "Please meet me at the well at 9 pm. It's important."

Manners never hurt. Especially when everything hinged upon her reply.

----

----

----

----

_Something's burrowing in his skin. Leaving its oozing larva. _

_They'll hatch in time and swim through his system. Fingers first, up the arm; squirm into his synapses; cocoon in gray matter. _

_Digging for gold._

_Screwing him over._

_(S)he hibernates._

**XXXX**

He was already awake and out of bed when she arose and smiled, adorably disheveled with her tousled hair and the pillow print on her face. He flashed a quick tally on the wall before returning to his previous task.

"You haven't done that for a while," she yawned.

"I know," he replied.

"So, why now?"

"Because."

Huffing at his enigmatic answers, she sloughed off the covers and padded to his side, peering over his shoulder.

He could sense her face brimming into a wide grin, and he almost wanted to pat himself on the back for his handiwork.

For he had transformed a tally with a line and etched her name into the wall. Where once he had surrounded his name with a window and a multitude of bars, he now had shattered those confines with her name and the fact that there was finally nothing else between them.

CLOUD TIFA

Because she was here, and only when he was wrapped up in her, did he feel like he belonged.

**XXXX**

He cursed himself for not bringing a watch. Even in his warm clothes, the night air was chilly, and he had been sitting here for a while. He wanted to move around, but he feared that if she did come, which seemed less and less likely by the minute, she would find him strange and fidgety. So he settled for swinging his legs, trying to circulate blood down to his feet.

"Sorry I'm late." She appeared suddenly around the corner of the well, looking nothing short of beautiful in a light summer dress that was highly inappropriate for the season. He quickly turned away, staring at the ground and trying to remember what it was he had wanted to say.

A minute later, he still couldn't recall the words.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something?" she tried once again to coax him to speak. Maybe she was getting cold, sitting out here for no reason.

He gulped and forced his voice to steady. "Come this spring...I'm leaving town for Midgar."

"All the boys are leaving town."

He quickly stood up and assumed his best SOLDIER stance. "But I'm different from them. I'm not just going to find a job. I want to join SOLDIER. I'm going to be the best there is, just like Sephiroth!"

"Sephiroth...the Great Sephiroth?" He wasn't sure if it was doubt in her voice or hesitation, so he stalked away to the tip-top of the well, and looked in the direction of Midgar. Maybe they'd put a marble statue of him up here someday, if he got really good.

"Isn't it hard to join SOLDIER?" she whispered.

He nodded, even though she couldn't see. "I probably won't be able to come back to this town for a while." A faint muffled choke came from her direction and his heart stopped at the thought of her tears before he reprimanded himself for being dumb, and then for not bringing her a coat. It was just the cold. She was huffing on her hands to keep them warm.

"If you make it, will you be in the newspapers?"

"I'll try."

"Hey, let's make a promise. Umm...if you get really famous and I'm ever in a bind, you'll come save me, all right?"

"What?"

"If I'm ever in trouble, my hero will come and rescue me. I want to experience that at least once."

_Her Hero? Him?_

"What?"

"Come on! Promise me!"

"All right...I promise," he nodded with everything he had. A shooting star sent a wish to the heavens, that the gods as his witnesses, he would be her hero.

He had a sinking feeling, though, in the depths of his soul, that this was too good to be true, that it was all a dream.

Please, _please_ don't let him wake up.


	17. Buonanotte 3

**A/N: **Cloud's military experience, particularly the inspirational speeches, is a combination of my imagination, a friend's time at one of the Academies, and my brother's middle school athletics coach. But it is in no way intended to be reflective of the modern military, despite parallels that may be drawn between the two. Also, I made a couple of allusions to books, music, etc., in this chapter or the previous ones. Don't own those either.

Thanks for reading.

* * *

_There's a barracuda of an instrument, hooked apparatuses fanning from all sides like dorsal wings. He has seen those before--a long, long time ago in a place destined for his dreams. Feather-light flutters on his reality. _

_The thought almost makes the pain bearable when the machine bends down to feed._

**XXXX**

He decided to unlock the door.

He wasn't expecting anybody, that's not why he did it.

It was just that everything felt so much lighter and freer when not bolted shut.

**XXXX**

"Mom...Mom. I'll be fine."

"I know, but my baby just grew up so fast," she sniffed away her tears.

He rolled his eyes, but accepted her crushing hug. "I'll be fine. And I'll write."

"You better," she said with her hands on her hips, trying to look stern. "Your poor mother does not need to be worrying about you."

He smirked. "She won't. She'll be too busy protecting her soup recipe."

"Oh, you," she laughed, but Cloud could hear the sob lodged in the back of her throat. "Don't forget to eat your vegetables and listen to your officers."

"Yes, Mom."

"And honey, I hope you meet some real nice people there. " He stiffened, but if she noticed, she didn't stop. "You make friends and show everybody what a good boy you are."

He gently released the hold of her arms, avoiding her eyes, and grabbed his duffle bag. "I gotta go. I'll write."

When he stepped out of the door into the early morning mist, the village was silent, save for the steady rumble of a truck at the edge of town that would take him and a few of the other boys . Vehicles didn't come too often to Nibelheim, so when they did, people usually exchanged room and board for a hitched ride. It was easier and safer than trekking through the wilderness, where monster attacks had become a common occurrence.

He tossed his bag on the bed of the truck and climbed on. There would be no warm farewell for him, not in this town at this time of day.

But as the truck pulled away into a plume of dust, he thought he spied Tifa standing at the top of the well, her outstretched hand waving him onward.

She'd be his shining beacon. He'd come back to her a hero.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve._

_Three, six, nine, twelve._

_Four, eight, twelve._

_How much longer until he gets out of this hellhole?_

_The bell tolls at midnight, beckons him to follow, but by that time he's already fast asleep._

_Exit the light._

**XXXX**

She wasn't telling him something. She still smiled, but sometimes she looked like he once had, with all her nervous glances towards the door.

But he didn't understand how that could be, when he was so happy here with her.

**XXXX**

"Hey, man. You headin' to Midgar?"

Cloud cracked open one eye and felt the world spinning around him. He took several deep breaths, then exhaled, "Yeah."

A tall blond plopped down next to him on the bench, offering him a smoke, but Cloud shook his head no, then immediately regretted the decision as his stomach lurched.

"You okay? You don't look so good."

"I'm..." the ship was rocking and rocking, going up...and down, and up....and down, and Cloud swallowed, "fine."

His companion clapped him on the back, and Cloud's stomach collided with his knees, spewing its contents over the idiot's shoes. The guy grimaced, "Fuck you, man. I was just tryin' to help."

Yeah, Cloud thought...well, that's...why it was every...man for...himself.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_He screams. But it's not his voice. His quit working a while ago. He's silent. Never could speak much, anyways. Who're these people? Who is screaming? They're angry screams. Who is? Am I?_

**XXXX**

The window was wailing. He clutched his head over his ears and begged for it to stop. Tifa rushed over to him and wrapped her arms around his hands and started talking loudly, but it was so much, too much, and he just wanted to sleep.

He must have, for when he opened his eyes, a piano sat in front of the window, and she was playing the melody he had always loved. He sunk into his pillow, feeling blissfully at peace.

The screams where still there, muted, but he ignored them. It was enough for now to listen to the music of her soul.

**XXXX**

"Alright, maggots. You listen and you listen good." The 'Welcoming Committee' in Midgar for all new military applicants slowly circled the group of fifty boys, ranging in age from twelve to sixteen. "My name is Sergeant Stinger, and you will address me as such or as Drill Sergeant. Understood?"

"Yes, Drill Sergeant, Sir!"

"What was that?"

"YES, DRILL SERGEANT, SIR!"

"Now if any of you babies thinks I'm going to mother you, then you gotta 'nother thing coming. These next few weeks will be officially known as hell. You won't eat, won't sleep, and I'm gonna run you until your muscles start bleedin' out your ass."

Cloud winced a little at the imagery, but luckily the Sergeant was turned the other way and didn't see. The last person to break form was held at attention until he collapsed. At least that was the word going around the barracks during orientation.

"And if you fail any of the tests," Stinger continued, "I'm going to be on your fat ass like shit on a shoe. You hear me?"

"YES, DRILL SERGEANT, SIR!"

"Wake up call is at 0430 hours, and lights out is at 2100. You're a part of the finest military force on the planet, and you goddamn better act like it. I will inspect your beds and your uniforms, and you pigs better be showered so I don't have to smell you.

"You're dismissed. Report to the quad at 1100."

"YES, DRILL SERGEANT, SIR!"

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Acerate shadows. Pinpricks._

_They descend._

_First one._

_...Then ten thousand._

_The bars of his cage are zero-point-three millimeters thick._

**XXXX**

There were colors swirling behind the window. Darkness and gray creeping in like a sickness.

She paled when she saw it, and for a moment, he thought she was priming her muscles for a fight; but then she smiled and pulled him towards the bed and talked about how things used to be.

And he decided to save his questions for a later date. It was more important to see her happy.

**XXXX**

One more step...

One more step.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Repeated ad nauseam. Literally.

Cloud had lost track of how many boys had fallen so far. There was probably a trail of them leading back to Midgar. And bored medics ready to discharge most, or curse the demands of the drill sergeants.

With each step he took, he could feel the bloody skin of his heels sliding back and forth against his ill-fitting boots. Drooping with sweat, his spikes clung to his forehead, and he mustered the strength to raise his arm and wipe their salty sting from his eyes. His lungs ached and his head swam with the drastic change in elevation and temperature between the deserts outside Midgar and the mountains of Nibelheim.

Just keep going, he told himself, as he leapt over a rocky outcrop. Tifa was counting on him.

He just had to...keep going.

Just. Keep. Going.

It's for Tifa, pretend you're saving Tifa, he said, and he pushed himself towards the sunrise.

Just run and run, and maybe someday he could run forever.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_He hasn't seen them in a while._

_They're incubating him in the world's amniotic fluid for the next reincarnation. Biding their time for some higher purpose._

_Guess they haven't heard the news. _

_Karma's a bitch._

**XXXX**

The darkness was growing.

"Tifa...what's going on out there?"

"It's just--not yet, Cloud.

"Please. I need more time."

**XXXX**

They trucked the recruits out to the middle of nowhere outside Midgar. Stinger was looking especially smug this morning as he swamped him with the stench of coffee and dared him to cough or hold his breath.

It was Hell Week, or Hell Month, or Hell Year.

First, it was the fifty-mile march to a point southeast of Midgar with a pack that probably weighed as much as Tifa did. And each time they broke for camp, he'd spend fifteen minutes treating and wrapping his feet and wishing like hell he could just chop them clean off. But that wouldn't get him out of the drill, considering Stinger's quadriplegic grandmother could 'motherfuckin' do-si-do faster than yer sorry ass is moving.'

Once they reached the mountains, the hike became even more unbearable: scaling rocks with or without gloves, climbing up ropes to the tops of cliffs, marching up forty-degree inclines. A couple of guys had already dropped out of rank and had to be hauled back to the infirmary at Shin-Ra. He was dead from the hike, but he kept going, thankful for the first time in his life for growing up in the mountains of Nibelheim.

Then it was the run. Officially a march, but with the way Stinger hounded the recruits, it damn well better have been a run. And again, he was still slower than the sergeant's grandma who apparently was some sort of damn superhero, what with everything Stinger claimed she was able to do. This time it was probably run in support hose and tap dance on their graves after she had beaten them to the finish line.

The obstacle course had been a special treat. Crab-marched through a series of tires in synthesized rain that flooded his ears and filled his oversized boots. Then jumping over a wall slicked with water and tumbling into a pit with mud that reached his knees.

He did push-ups until he couldn't count, and sit-ups and squats until his muscles spasmed in his sleep and he couldn't straighten himself out on his mat at night.

If he made it, he got nothing except the consolation that maybe, _maybe_ he wouldn't have to do it all again next week.

No guarantees, though, for maggots.

Not even for wannabe heroes.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_There's a sign hanging on his cage._

_The film over his eyes makes it hard to read backwards, but he imagines it to say, 'Please Do Not Feed the Animals.'_

**XXXX**

He thought he heard whispers in his dreams. He wanted to open his eyes and scope out the room, but those sounds were so soothing compared to the screams he was used to, that he fell back asleep.

It was the screams that were unbearable. Filled with so much pain, that he wanted to throw up. But they weren't his. Even when he keened on his bedroom floor, or long ago at the bottom of a gorge, his screams made no sound.

**XXXX**

No wonder Shin-Ra was so rich, he thought absently as he stared at the grayish or graying lump before him. Why pay for food when newspaper and vitamins were adequate?

"Eat up, maggots!" Stinger yelled as he slammed his own tray on the table, then ordered several cadets to clean up the mess.

The plates didn't even give you space to hide it. And there was no way dropping this sludge on the floor wouldn't be noticed.

So he closed his eyes and gulped it down. He didn't dare hold his nose, despite the overwhelming press of nausea, for fear that Stinger would hold it for him, clamping a hand over his mouth until he choked and passed out.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_They've quit using painkillers. First they doped him up. High as a kite. What a trip._

_But the war junkie's crash razes an entire village and leaves no survivors. _

_And the witnesses are all burned out.  
_

**XXXX**

In the haze of his dreams, he thought he heard the click of the door.

Hadn't he locked it?

Oh, right. Maybe not.

**XXXX**

After six weeks, it was time for the physical training tests: a timed sequence of running, push-ups, sit-ups, and wall-climbing.

A one-fifty passed you into the regular ranks, while a three hundred graduated you to advanced physical training, a period that could last anywhere from three weeks to two years, in which you prepped for SOLDIER, Third Class, and underwent weapons and combat training.

Anything less sent you to fat camp or packing.

Cloud almost wanted to bite his nails from sheer nervousness as he stood in the great hall waiting for his name and score to be called. But breaking form at a crucial time like this, when drill sergeants walked up and down the lines inspecting each of them under pressure, was one of the surest ways to get sent back to hell. So he remained perfectly still and silent and looked no one in the eye.

"Strife, Cloud. Three-twenty."

He didn't even sigh in relief.

He was barely hero level. But he was there. Of course, Stinger had muttered something, which was still a yell, about little goddamn shrimp bitches getting into SOLDIER, but considering that he didn't mention his grandmother, Cloud thought he might have been impressed.

He had gotten through Round One.

And in the end, after hours of standing and marching and running and following orders, it was all that mattered.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_The tentacles coil around him. He has followed her magic flute for too long, the snake charmer who was nothing more than a reptile in disguise, and she unhinges her jaw and swallows him whole. _

_She'll sleep for weeks as she assimilates him body and soul, then she'll blink one evil eye and look for her next victim._

**XXXX**

"What're you doing here? You're supposed to be fighting them."

"Shit, Tifa. I know. But--"

"The awakening?"

"Yeah. Is he ready yet?"

"I've been working on it. But it's not easy, you know that."

"Fuck...Time for Plan B."

"What? You think that's best? You know what could happen."

"I know. But what choice do we have? He's broken. If he doesn't find himself soon, they're going to rip him apart."

"But it's not time...Maybe if he were whole, he could--"

"Look, Tifa. I know. But we're going to have to risk it. You just keep taking care of the dreams, and I'll handle the honor.

"And don't worry. He's tough. He won't give up without a fight."

Cloud fought to open his eyes and see who was there whispering with weighted silence, but the words' somber spell had blinded him in darkness.

**XXXX**

"Please have a seat, Cadet."

"Yes, ma'am."

He sat ramrod straight on a chair in the medical ward. The room was completely white, as was the entire building, except for the chairs, the metal fixtures on the cabinets, and the silver examination table in the center of the room.

"At ease, solder," the woman laughed. "No one's going to inspect you here."

The sound of a voice so light and cheerful and not yelled at the top of her lungs made him relax, but only a little. She pushed her red-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose and hummed. "I see you've done quite well on the physical tests. Any problems?"

"No, ma'am."

"Really? I've heard that Stinger can be kind of a brute."

He shifted awkwardly in his seat, and she laughed again. "I'll take that as a 'yes,' then."

She reached into an overhead cabinet and pulled out a syringe and a graduated bottle of green fluid. A couple of strands of hair fell out of the clip above her ear, and she absently pushed them away while she searched for his height and weight on his chart and did a quick calculation of the dosage.

"I'm going to ask you to remain still," she said, as she swabbed his arm with antiseptic. "Afterwards, you will remain in here while we monitor your responses. Occasionally, someone may ask you to perform minor physical tests. Nothing like Stinger's, I assure you. Stuff like touch your toes, jog in place, clap your hands in a certain rhythm. Understand?"

Cloud nodded.

"You might want to close your eyes for this," she smiled.

He made no movement. He wasn't scared. He watched the needle get closer and closer and graze the skin then pierce it with an eerie throb then sink deeper and deeper until he was sure it would hit bone and the plunger dropped and there wasn't anything different about him.

And somewhere along the way, a door clicked shut, and Cloud was left alone. Alone in a white, white room. And what the fuck was with hospitals always being so fucking white? It's not like wood or metal came in that shade. They should be colored, he thought. Like that one dress she wore. With brown floors to match her eyes. She'd like that. Her hero stuck in a room to match her. But none of those other guys would realize that because fuck if they knew anything about her at all. And they weren't her hero anyways. But then again they hadn't watched her fall, fall, fall from the bridge and the room turned the color of her tears that he never saw but he heard when she played their song or asked him to be a hero because surely not even she believed he could save her. His track record was shit. But he'd show them, he'd show them all---

"Cadet!"

"Huh?"

"I've asked you several times to please touch your toes."

"Oh, uh. Okay. Sorry." He bent down and touched the floor, then stood back up.

He could see her writing something from her position behind a great pane of glass before the microphone clicked on, "Thank you, Cadet. You should get the results shortly."

He nodded and made his way back to the barracks and settled in for a night of tossing and turning, and wasn't surprised when, at 0900 hours, he heard the news.

He had heard of dreams deferred. The heavy weight bearing on your back until you combusted or exploded.

It wasn't anything like that.

His heart had festered and rotted a long time ago under a sagging bridge. And all that was left was the dull ache of failure not unexpected.

But, like the lady said, there was always next year, if he stayed on.

What the hell. Why not?

He couldn't ever return home now. Might as well do something productive with his life.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Mako-laced leather straps._

_They've changed the restraints. Downgraded. _

_These are more cost-effective when he doesn't need steel._

**XXXX**

When he finally pulled himself out of bed, there was a man in the room. Cloud shifted surreptitious glances between him and the door, while the stranger's smile grew wider.

"Hey, Spike. Remember me?"

The dark-haired man scratched the back of his head, while Cloud circled him. He didn't bother to hide the lack of recognition in his eyes, or the bored shrug he gave when he accepted it.

"I'm Cloud."

"Zack. Nice to, uh, meet you."

Cloud knew the room was weird, and he'd remember this guy sooner or later. Tifa was real good about helping him with that.

**XXXX**

He wondered what she would think if she could see him now, fundamentally bored as he patrolled one of the lower floors in the Shin-Ra building. He sure didn't cut as striking a profile as a SOLDIER, not in his goofy helmet and knee pads and protective _scarf_.

Maybe she'd laugh, or choke back a sob, when she realized Johnny was hee-heeing and asking her to dance and she'd have to go steady with the wrong guy, one who never even wanted to protect her, while the one who did, couldn't keep her from getting hurt.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_He knows in advance how bad the pain will be by the sound of the voices._

_Some are mild, some are muted, and one brings pain in shades previously unknown in the spectrum._

**XXXX**

Cloud stood back in shock. "You have the same color eyes."

Zack glanced at Tifa, an unreadable expression passing between the two. "Yeah. I do."

"Weird. I thought I was the only one."

**XXXX**

Cloud didn't bother to get a good look at any of the men he was working with. It was just him and a few other guys and some Turks, all sent to protect a Shin-Ra scientist from a group of terrorists. No one bothered briefing infantrymen about the details of the mission, but an electric feeling pervaded the atmosphere of the railcar. The rumors about this group--AVALANCHE, was it?--had been vicious at best. They were a bunch of do-or-die radicals, ones that Shin-Ra aimed to eliminate at any and all cost to their basic soldiers. Maybe that was why no one here even asked for names, or introductions. It was enough to keep talking and nodding as some guy beside him lamented over the fact that he really missed his mama's cooking, and that his sweetheart was the greatest girl ever, with a little va va voom to boot, while all the time the only thing people were actually thinking was who was going to die: me, him, or them. The talking helped, though. At least someone was beside him, and he wasn't alone.

And somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought this might be his chance to impress his superiors. He was working with the Turks, who, reportedly, got paid even better than SOLDIERs. They were top-of-the-line assassins.

He'd show them he had what it took to be a hero, that they had wasted their time if they sent an elite force to babysit him.

Heroes always did their job above and beyond the call of duty.

But most of all, heroes never ever left a man behind. They had girls waiting for them at home.

Even Cloud.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Boil, boil, toil, and there's trouble. He can't take the heat. Can't get out of the kitchen. _

_Either way his goose is cooked. _

**XXX**

"How come you've got two swords?"

Zack shifted a look to where Tifa was playing the piano, but his smile never faltered. "For practice."

"Practice?"

"Yeah. You wanna be a hero someday, right? Well, we both know what a lousy shot you are," Zack waved off the glare Cloud sent him, "so I thought I could teach you to use a sword."

"But...why? We're stuck in a room."

Zack shrugged, "You never know sometimes." He tossed Cloud a blade, squared his shoulders, and smirked, "Now, let's see what you've got."

**XXXX**

The station was dark and abandoned. He should've guessed there'd be an ambush.

The two men flashed their guns at the group assigned to guard the shaking, screaming doctor. The Turk--a woman--moved in front of their party and launched herself at the nearest AVALANCHE member. Cloud loaded his gun and fired, but between the kickback from the muzzle and the rush of adrenaline fizzing through his body, he missed wide, and bullets ricocheted from the walls or grazed thighs and barely missed his compatriot as she engaged a much larger opponent.

"I'll take care of this. Get the doctor to a safe place," she hissed through her teeth.

Cloud and the others pulled the doctor behind a pillar, as gunfire pelleted the walls. He waited for a lull, then fired his own round behind the barricade.

His shots did little to deter the men attacking her, but he was going to fight. It was all he had ever known how to do.

Fight and try.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_The wheels spin and spin and spin and the voices rumble and tumble inside his head._

_Modulating phase._

**XXXX**

"Do we have enough room to practice in here?"

"Oh, sure. This place is pretty damn flexible. See?" He took a big swing at the wall, creating a huge peeling scratch, but slicing nowhere near through it. "Won't be there in the morning. Totally damage-proof."

"You mean Zack-proof," Tifa added from her spot near the window.

"Hush before I school your ass, too."

She smirked, "Bring it, Fair."

"Oh, it's _soo_ on."

"Guys?" Cloud interjected quietly.

"Right, first things first. Gotta teach our boy here to fight."

After learning the basics of offense--the overhead cut, the side cut, the thrust, the stab, the slash--Zack charged him, maybe going a little easy, but Cloud stood firm, and parried the advances with a few rapid fire moves of his own, especially once he noticed Zack's pattern.

Afterwards, they propped their swords against the now hideous wall, and Zack smirked, while ruffling Cloud's hair. "Man, I'm impressed. You're a born natural, ain't he, Teef?"

She wrapped her arms around Cloud's waist and buried her face into the shelter of his neck, "I always knew he was."

Cloud felt something right inside himself and decided not to think too much about it when, come morning, the wall was healed, whole and pure except where tallied and tagged.

**XXXX**

"Cloud! Behind you!"

A blunt steel force to the back of the head sprawled him on the floor of the train. His head throbbed, and he vaguely registered the doctor being carted away by the brute terrorist. He tried to push himself to his knees, but his world spun around him and he collapsed again. The sounds of fighting and screaming blasted him from nearby, and when he finally raised himself to his feet, the Turk was ordering him to stay behind while she checked outside.

When he stumbled over the unconscious body of a man towards the window for a better view , she was already surrounded by terrorists.

The enemy's sword lay on the ground, and although the weapon was unfamiliar, he picked it up and ran to help. He spun on two AVALANCHE members and felt the splash of blood hit his face. But the weight of the blade felt good in his hands, so he swung it again at the two remaining targets. Then again. And again. His muscles flared with a rush he had never felt before, and he thrust forward and ended up behind them. One came at him with an empty gun, and metal collided, and he could feel his stale breath on his face. But Cloud kicked back and with a fell swoop, knocked the man to the ground, slicing across his trachea.

The battle was over and the doctor was safe and there were four dead men whose blood was staining his shoes and who would never go home to their girls if they had them; but he had saved a life, maybe two, and even if secrets had been lost, he had done his job and proven something and a Turk had called him a future SOLDIER and he liked the sound of that and bet Tifa would too.

So that was what it felt like to be a hero.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_He wonders how they're not bored with this yet._

_He knows he is. _

_You can cut him a million different ways, but it don't matter when he's just gonna be dead in the end._

**XXXX**

"Okay, not bad, but you gotta add more pizzazz to your moves. You're a hero, man! Not a grunt. You gotta do things with style. And occasionally, run amok."

Cloud glared at his sparring partner. "I'm doing just fine," he grunted, taking another swing.

Zack ducked and spun under the blade, while blocking the incoming sword with his own. "Yeah, but you still need a catch phrase. Something to rally the troops in the heat of battle." He pushed Cloud towards the wall, then came charging with a strobe-like flash of metal. "Or make the bad guys go, 'Aw shit, he means business.' "

"Like _'Later' _or '_Oh yeah!_' ?" Cloud raised his eyebrows in disbelief, when they stalemated once again.

"Oh yeah! But don't use that one. Trademark violation."

**XXXX**

"You will be accompanying a SOLDIER operative and myself to investigate a reactor in Modeoheim. Be ready at 0900 hours."

"Yes, sir!" Cloud saluted the man with a serious face and a dark suit.

Truth be told, Cloud was excited. He had never gotten the chance to watch a SOLDIER work up close.

Maybe he could even learn something on this mission.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_A monster lives in his ear._

_He or she whispers bittersweet nothings of the fall before the crash._

**XXXX**

The sword felt good in his hands--solid and weighted with the aegis of identity, as if it were a part of him, as if it had always been a part of him and someone with bitten fingernails and money placed on the outcome was waiting for him to step up to the plate and take a swing.

And run home.

**XXXX**

Everything ached. For once he was thankful for the goofy helmet that helped cushion the blow to his head on fresh-fallen snow.

Behind him the helicopter burned; but no bones were broken and everyone was alive, so the team pressed on, around and down the mountain.

"Yo! Don't fall too far behind!" the SOLDIER next to him called out to their companions, before turning to Cloud. "At least someone's keeping up."

"Well, I'm a country boy, too."

"From where?"

"Nibelheim." But the SOLDIER just laughed. "How about you?"

"Me. Gongaga. Hey! What's so funny about that? You know Gongaga?"

"No, but it's such a backwater name."

"Ditto Nibelheim."

As they continued down the slope, Cloud realized how nice it was to talk to somebody for a change, especially when that person wasn't mooning over a girl, or crying for his mother, or wondering if he was going to die.

From the very beginning, Cloud knew the guy, Zack, rolled with the punches. Maybe it was because he was a SOLDIER, or maybe because he hadn't stopped talking since he introduced himself, except to ask Cloud questions here and there and actually wait for an answer. Or to let Cloud ask what it was like to be in SOLDIER.

He didn't think he had ever learned about somebody so fast. Like Zack's favorite food (anything but onions, which were the bane of his existence); or music: rock.

Or his past. Like how when he was little, Zack's parents had taken him to see some chocobos that a neighbor was breeding. And he had snuck off to where a group of them were feeding, and almost lost a hand when he grabbed some of the Zeio nuts from the trough so he could lure away a chocobo for himself, but those damn birds saw him and chased him and he was stuck in a tree while they kicked it and squawked and he had to wait _forever_ until they got bored and left.

"Vital lesson I learned right there. I always make sure to pass it along so no one else makes the same mistake."

"Uh, Zack?"

"Yeah, man?"

"Was...What was the lesson?"

Zack grinned, then turned to walk backwards to check on the stragglers. "It's all good fun until someone loses a nut.

"Right, Tseng?" he yelled back.

Far behind them, the winded Turk paused to catch his breath and waved them onward.

Zack smirked.

"He agrees."

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_A civil war rages. Both sides are at an impasse. _

_But they talk and talk because silence is the real killer._

**XXXX**

"Okay, now materia. Pretty cool stuff. Overuse it, and you won't have any strength. But it's really handy if you're swamped with enemies or a summon. But that's just textbook crap. On to your real education....

"Cloud, meet Fire and Ice. And this little baby here is Thunder."

**XXXX**

Zack had told him to pay attention and take notes as he went and dealt with the enemy. Maybe he meant for him to stay back.

But Cloud hadn't ever let a teammate fight alone, and he wasn't about to start now. Not when he actually had a friend depending on him.

Guns blazing, he burst through the factory doors and faced what might have been his doom. But it still felt nice.

Even if he was the lowly sidekick.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Jackknifed on a table, his body weeps._

_Red, red._

**XXXX**

"You always fight with honor, you hear me? There's no pride in winning a dirty fight."

"And if they fight dirty?"

"Cloud, listen. You have to keep your honor no matter what. Even if they kill you. It's the price you pay to fight free."

**XXXX**

When Cloud got to the door, he rushed to stop the scientist from escaping, while Zack was engaged in a battle with the fugitive First Class. It wasn't the same as fighting Genesis, but Cloud knew Zack would be proud if he could complete the mission's unspoken objective. But the man was big and Cloud struggled to contain his arms within his own, before he was knocked to the ground by a fleshy elbow.

Taken out by an overweight geezer. A nerd.

Oh, that was rich.

Definite SOLDIER material, right here.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_The soldiers in the throes of starvation crawl towards the happy scene before them._

_The table is set, the banquet prepared, and the feast isn't even over before the soldiers keel over, choking on a bone, or dying from a nasty case of 'Too Much, Too Fast, Too Soon.'_

**XXXX**

When he woke up one morning, he noticed a new scrawl on the wall. He turned to Zack, who was polishing his sword and grinning like an idiot. "You write like a five-year-old," Cloud muttered.

Zack hopped off his bed and affectionately roughed Cloud's hair. "I know girls who would _kill_ for that autograph. You're a lucky guy."

"If by lucky, you mean disturbed," Cloud scowled.

Zack smirked, while Tifa merely shrugged, and fell back asleep. Cloud thought she probably had the right idea.

**XXXX**

"You should get the steak."

"What---No, that's too much."

"No, no. I insist. It's on Shin-Ra tonight."

"I could just get--"

"Say anything but steak, and I'm leaving you with the bill."

"Uh, I'll have the steak. Medium."

The waitress nodded at the pair, and curled a ringlet of hair around her finger."Alright, two steaks. What can I get you to drink?"

Zack grinned, "Beer, whadduya say, Spike?"

"That's okay."

The waitress kept tossing her wild auburn hair, while leaning dangerously forward on the table, and Cloud was secretly glad they hadn't been served their food yet. "Can I see some ID?" she whispered huskily.

Zack's smile only grew. "See, here's the thing...Andie. Me'n my buddy here just got off duty. And IDs are pretty much the last thing on our minds when we're out there saving the world. So, how 'bout it? Two beers for Midgar's finest."

Zack winked at the end, and the waitress--Andie--giggled, "I'll be back, boys," and she sashayed towards the kitchen.

"First-name basis?" Cloud questioned.

But his companion merely smirked, "Nametag." He paused to drum his fingers on the table, before starting up again. "Soo...whatchu been doin' lately?"

"Eh, slum patrol or fire duty."

"Damn. They rot you guys there, huh?"

Cloud shrugged, as she came back with two drinks, and a napkin with a number written on it. Zack sent her away for some bread--the really good kind--before setting the sweating glass on top of the numbers that were now bleeding onto the table.

"I think she wanted you to---"

Zack waved his hand idly and cut him off. "When're the next SOLDIER exams?"

"October."

"Yeah? You ready?"

"Uh...I don't know."

"Come on, man. If they let me in, you can get in."

"I don't--"

"It'll be no sweat. You passed the physical tests all right. You just gotta learn to relax. Say, you been up to the Rec Room on the SOLDIER floor?"

Cloud shot his friend a look of disbelief. "Not a SOLDIER, Zack."

"Thanks for the memo, _Strife_. But if you want, I can get you in with my keycard and I'll show you up in a game of pool. We'll even have stakes. Twenty gil. Whadduya say?"

Cloud paused, frowned, then tilted his mouth in a knowing smirk. "Make it fifty, and you're on."

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_A hollow man stuck in empty time as he stands at the gates of the Promised Land._

_Tick...tick...tick...tick._

_...Tick...tick...tick...tick._

_Kapow! Kablam! Dyn-o-mite! Whatever stops the clock._

_That heaven's a lie._

**XXXX**

"I remember you," he said one day.

Both Tifa and Zack had the widest grins on their faces, and Cloud could feel the ends of his own lips turning upwards.

"'Bout damn time."

**XXXX**

"So you want to be in SOLDIER? Hang in there."

All the infantrymen were excited to be working with Zack. Or at least, Cloud thought, they should have been. He was no Sephiroth, but he treated everyone like an equal and almost made them believe that one day they could be up there, too.

It was all because of that one piece of advice...no, an order. To embrace their dreams.

And the assurance that whatever happened, they were coming back alive with nothing less than SOLDIER honor.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_The zombie and the alien hold court inside his head. _

_Sounds like the perfect recipe for disaster. You won't be able to tear your eyes off that train wreck._

_Like you have no idea._

**XXXX**

They whispered at night when they thought he wasn't listening. Sometimes he couldn't hear them; other times he'd catch them talking about the newest trick in his arsenal.

Like a rain of meteors. To use only when the sky was falling.

**XXXX**

People were crowding him, screaming in horror as they evacuated their homes from the onslaught of the enemy in Junon. Don't worry, he tried to tell them. I've got it under control. Come this way, I'll keep you safe.

He should have been a pillar of strength with his uniform and his gun.

But the presence of monsters and those who were barely men were far more convincing than a good ol' boy who was only pretending to be needed.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Crop circles in the glass. Thumb, forefinger, pinkie. Perfect symmetry. _

_She's coming in a blaze of glory. A green-light bonfire._

_They just have to make the connection first. Phone home, so to speak._

_Ring, ring._

**XXXX**

The window had been eclipsed from the outside into complete and utter darkness.

He didn't know how it was possible, but the room was worse now. It was the blackness he hated, and the way the screams had gotten louder, and how nobody inside the room knew what to do except what they had always done.

**XXXX**

As he stood in one of the briefing rooms, he could hardly contain his excitement for this mission. It was a chance to work with his best friend, and the greatest hero on Gaia.

It was basically a dream come true. The only thing that could have made it better was being a SOLDIER, First Class himself.

And later, after Sephiroth uttered those few fatal words, never having to realize that your dream was turning into nothing more than a nightmare.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_He howls._

_Longs to extend his claws, bare his incisors, and attack._

_After years of abuse, the feral beast inside him knows no mercy._

_But now's not the time, not yet._

_It's not safe to hunt when he's still prey._

**XXXX**

"Okay. Dude. When I say 'run amok,' I mean _run amok_. There're a whole heap of crazies out there. Forget about the damn room."

"Don't listen to him, Cloud," Tifa paused in playing a song while she stretched her fingers. "You do your own thing."

"Yeah, listen to the lady. And run amok."

**XXXX**

The homes looked the same. The gardens, the well. Even his old teacher was just as wrinkled as she was when he was twelve. Nibelheim was a place stuck in time. He left a loser, he returned one, too. He really should have figured that out a long time ago.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_There's talk about numbers. New ones. He already has his picked out._

_Pi._

_Cool, huh?_

_Two reasons for it._

_One: Because it never ends, so if they're always writing he'll never have to find out what that number means._

_Two: Because he's been going in circles for forever, and he still thinks there's no getting off this train he's on._

**XXXX**

"You know, this is a real good sword. Six blades. You can do some damage with that."

"Run amok, you mean."

The smile was cheeky, but Cloud didn't miss the relieved sigh in his voice. "You know, I think he's got it."

**XXXX**

"Oh, man. Thanks for the meal, Ms. S."

"I don't mind. I'm happy to feed any friend of Cloud's." She placed her napkin on the table before taking her plate to the sink. "I'm so glad he's finally getting along with people. Now all he needs is a girlfriend. An older one, maybe?"

"So, uh...what do you do around here for fun?" Zack blurted suddenly. Cloud shot a grateful look towards his friend, who nodded, then heaped his plate full of seconds of the mashed potatoes.

"Well, I like to garden and cook, although I don't have much of a chance to do that anymore. But oh, I have the cutest picture of my baby when he was baking cookies in one of my aprons. Let me see if I can find it."

She shuffled off towards the living room, while Cloud blanched, choked on a carrot, and wasn't sure whether to thank or kill Zack for slapping him on the back.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Trapped like a spider's prey. A single unbreakable thread, glistening impishly before it severs his windpipe._

_There's always a moment of beauty before the final breakdown._

**XXXX**

"What's he doing?" Cloud whispered.

Tifa looked up from her position on their bed, where she had been talking and listening to tales of Cloud's military days, and said, "Squats."

"Yeah, man!" Zack added, grunting. "Best way to build muscle tone. And doesn't hurt with the ladies, either."

Cloud cast a sidelong glance at Tifa, but she merely shrugged.

She did that a lot lately.

**XXXX**

Her hat was tilted rakishly in the picture, while she posed in a skirt and shirt that were far shorter (thank Gaia) than anything he had ever seen her wear before. She had curves that he didn't remember, and her face had matured into that of a blossoming beauty. She didn't smile in the photograph, but her brown eyes beckoned with a playful glint that was so characteristic of the strong spirit he adored.

In a word, Tifa looked...incredible.

Damn fine, as Zack would say. Really, really damn fine.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Fate, monstrous and empty. Like a hole in the head._

_Come, come, O come._

_But please do not let him die._

**XXXX**

At night, when everyone stopped talking and ivory keys stilled, he couldn't sleep.

The screams had gotten louder, almost unbearable.

But he couldn't tell his friends about it.

The words had been sucked right out of his mouth.

**XXXX**

"Why don't you talk to her? Better than moping around in the inn all day."

Cloud turned away and covered his head with a pillow. "You couldn't possibly understand."

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Come, take a bite, she tells him. One little bite._

_The snake lures him closer, and as her fangs sink into his neck, he knows he's forgotten something else._

_It's such a weird sensation, being fallen._

**XXXX**

Zack wasn't going easy on him anymore. There was a desperate edge to the way he made Cloud spar, even if he teased him afterwards, or joked. But when they weren't practicing, and he wasn't talking, Zack was lost in thought.

Tifa, too. When she wasn't frantically working at the pair of gloves she had or talking with him or playing the piano, it was almost like she was beyond his reach.

And the screams he heard then made him sick.

**XXXX**

All that training, protecting the doctor from the terrorists was mere practice compared to now.

This was what he simultaneously dreamed of and dreaded his whole life. His legs felt like jelly and he marveled at his ability to walk.

But it didn't stop him from jumping in front of her when the monsters appeared, even if Zack took care of most of them with the flat edge of his sword.

And once he and Sephiroth went inside the reactor, and it was just Cloud and Tifa left to fend for themselves when the clones arrived, it didn't stop him from trying to fight because this--she--was finally something important.

He had barely tugged the gun off his shoulder and jumped in front of her, when he was downed by the first hit, punishment for a fall from a bridge so many years ago.

And once again, he realized he had done nothing, but he might have, had the wolves stayed away or the hero not come, or had he simply been born under a different star.

Zack, he was sure, was born under a warrior's constellation. Cloud was beginning to think his were the scales that never balanced, or maybe even the goddamn virgin.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_The chase is on. Faster, go faster._

_They've released the beasts trailing his scent like a pack of hounds._

_But he's tired._

_So damn tired._

_And he fears the end is near. Call it a hunch, a remnant of the instincts he once inherited._

**XXXX**

"Zack, tell me. Why are we really doing this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean all this...it's pointless. It's not like I was ever a hero back then. What chance do I have now?"

"Don't you dare start with that shit. Just don't...not now."

**XXXX**

He couldn't remember how he got there, but when he awoke, he was back in the inn room with Zack.

"Tifa's safe. Don't worry."

"If only I were SOLDIER...

"Zack?"

His friend merely sighed, "SOLDIER is like a den of monsters. Don't go inside."

It wasn't true, not at all. But even so, Cloud thought that being the monster was ten times better than being the one they killed.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_When Cloud Strife woke up one morning after a lifetime of nightmarish dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous creature._

_Oh, wrong name. And details._

_Same idea, though. One day he woke up a changed man, and his life was fucking hell._

**XXXX**

It was...Night. And there were screams in the deathly darkness. What was happening? The screams were loud. Too loud. Louder than they had ever been. Twisting him around, wringing the life out of him. Screaming for blood. Clamoring for it. And he just--

"Cloud! Get a hold of yourself!"

His eyes flew open, and he saw Zack pinning his arms down, and his own voice tore from his throat. "Tifa!"

"Here, Cloud." Her hand came up to cover his heart, as she crawled off the floor. She looked dazed, and the light around her dimmed when he realized she was bruised.

He threw off Zack and rushed to her side. "What the hell did you do to her?" he demanded.

"It wasn't me."

"But--"

"You were flailing around, and you hit her before we could stop you."

Cloud's eyes flew to her face, to the darkened circle around her eye, but she cut him off before he could say anything. "It's okay, Cloud. It'll heal."

"But--"

"But nothing. Don't worry about it. We just have to lock the door." She walked over and flipped the deadbolt shut. "We'll be okay now."

Cloud didn't move. "But I hurt you."

"It wasn't your fault. " She knelt before him and gripped his face between her hands. "Just promise me you won't unlock the door."

"What?"

"Swear it, Cloud," Zack's voice cut in, unusually stoic. "You can't open the door."

"Okay. I promise."

But even as the words left his mouth, he thought it was too late.

She was hurt again, and this time there was no doubt about it.

It was all his fault.

**XXXX**

She was bleeding.

She smiled at him, and he hadn't been there to save her. He felt like he was eight again, except now he was strong enough to carry her to safety, but only after the damage had been done. And this time when he pleaded with her to wake up, she did.

But last time she hadn't, and she had lived. He didn't want to think about the other option.

Zack called to him from where he had collapsed on the stairs. "Finish the job," he heaved, before his muscles gave out beneath him.

Cloud nodded. It never occurred to him that he didn't have a chance.

All he knew was that Sephiroth had stolen everything he loved. He was an empty shell, with his heart's lub-dub fading on the floor. He didn't have a goddamn thing to lose.

He charged.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_When they reassembled him, they put him together wrong. _

_It wasn't just his mind either, but a puzzle piece jammed into a space where it didn't fit. _

_Until the piece warps and distorts an Elysian impression into a grotesque work of shock art._

**XXXX**

He was stunned all day. Nothing helped. Not her arms around him, or the sound of the song she hummed in his ear, or the way his friend tried to smile and joke.

"Where'd you get the scar, Zack?" he asked suddenly.

"What? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question."

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard before answering. "A friend."

"Yeah, a friend," Cloud scoffed. "And don't worry about it, right?"

**XXXX**

Everything had burned. His mother wouldn't even get a funeral because _He_ had fucking burned her into nothing. Burned by the same man he once idolized. Burned in the same breath with his childhood and the symbol of his dreams. Burned with everybody he had once hated.

And Cloud burned with them. Pierced through the heart, he didn't care. Nothing was there anymore.

Somebody had to die.

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Funny how you never realize that today is the day you're going to die._

_It just...happens. The world ends, and half the people involved don't even know it._

**XXXX**

During the middle of the night, while his friend snored in the bed to his right and she slumbered in his arms, he crept to the door and unlocked it.

He knew he had promised. But he had promised to be her hero, too, and look how that turned out.

Somehow he knew that if the door were open, the screams would stop, and there would be no way he could hurt her anymore.

Sure, promises were sacred, but only because the people involved were. It was always a matter of keeping them safe. This solved that problem.

Conflict resolved.

**XXXX**

The battle was over so fast. Stabbed, twisted, fallen.

Him or Sephiroth?

Who cared?

He couldn't save them, but he fought.

Was he a hero?

With his bleeding on the floor next to his best friend while the girl he swore to protect was cold and alone and maybe dead and he couldn't even tell her goodbye--honestly, did it really fucking matter?

**----**

**----**

**----**

**----**

_Ironic, isn't it, how he had drowned too?_

_Even more so that after four years, somebody had finally thrown him a lifeline. Broken his crystal cage.  
_

_It's nice, but you shouldn't have bothered, man._

_Everybody he's ever loved is hurt or dead._

_What are the odds that you'll be the exception?_

**XXXX**

He awoke to her screams. She wrapped her arms over his face and begged him not to look, while Zack cursed and drew his sword.

But it was too late.

It wasn't the monster in the bed to the left of him with her pallid skin and eyes devoid of everything but a purpose that stopped his heart.

It was the man to the front.

A man from his nightmares he thought had died and whom he never wanted to think about ever again.

Like a snake uncoiled after a long hibernation, the man lifted green eyes and spotted his victim. He spoke, and his voice was singed with tones that made Cloud think of flying through flames.

And the silver snake smiled.

"We meet again...Cloud."


	18. Noctilucent

**A/N:** As always, this chapter may be somewhat confusing, since there will be rapid scene changes between the room and the outside world as seen in the events of Crisis Core. It's also a bit of a break from my usual style, which was quite the experience for me, so I hope it works okay for everybody.

Also, I originally intended to end this with lyrics from the namesake song, but although beautiful, the rhythm was weird and I deleted them. However, should you be interested, I highly recommend looking them up. Without any conscious effort on my part, this story followed them fairly well.

Special thanks goes to kitsune13 for her input on this final set of chapters and for dealing with my recurring freak-outs over this story.

& To everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, or put GLS on story alert, you have my utmost thanks.

* * *

"Sephiroth."

The name dripped venom from his tongue, and Cloud winced at the hiss in his own voice.

The other man slit his green eyes and casually strolled to the window still sheathed in darkness. "A commendable effort, I must say."

His long silver hair trailed behind him in an invisible breeze that pushed back the flaps of his coat, and Cloud's breath caught in his throat.

Sephiroth was without his sword.

"What do you want?" Cloud demanded. He quickly scanned the room for his own weapon tucked into the shadowed darkness near the window.

Sephiroth followed his line of sight, then with a slow smile, brought his hand forward and summoned the blade through the air.

Tifa latched onto Cloud's arm, tugging him away and begging him to ignore everything, while the other man lazily spun the sword and inspected its craftsmanship.

"A fine blade. Almost fit for a SOLDIER. Wouldn't you agree, Zack?"

Cloud turned to where his friend was seething, slowly circling the alien-like woman. "What the hell are you doing with this _bitch_?" His fingers flexed on his sword, but his posture was fraught with tension and he looked ready to snap.

Sephiroth smiled and shook his head. "Always the last to figure things out, weren't you?

"Good to see that he kept that part of you accurate."

He shot his hand out to the side, embedding the sword in the wall to the right. Cloud stared in shock, as Sephiroth insouciantly turned to the window, his hands and face pressed to the glass.

Tifa was again in front of him, wrapping her arms around his neck. But unlike before her fingers were encased in leather as they slipped through his spikes. Her eyes were wide and frightened, even while she attempted a smile. "Come on, Cloud. Don't listen to him."

"How pitiful."

Cloud wrenched his head from Tifa's hold and glared at the man.

"I asked you what the hell do you want."

But Sephiroth ignored him and turned to the woman.

'"Look, Mother. The darkness."

"Mother...?"

"Yes. Jenova-- Mother. Yours and mine."

In a flash, Cloud had launched himself over the beds and levered the blade out of the wall. He raised it accusingly at the silver-haired warrior's form but didn't dare advance.

"My mother is dead. You _killed_ her."

Sephiroth laughed, "The puppet has no idea."

"What!"

"He actually thinks he's real, doesn't he?"

"Shut up. I saw you. I fucking _saw_ you burn Nibelheim to the ground. You deserve to die."

"Oh, really?"

And Cloud paled. Sunk to the ground against rotting wood.

The room had shimmered, shifted, and he was back in his hometown with its quaint, quiet houses and empty streets. But it wasn't the Nibelheim he knew.

This city wasn't real.

Not without the people that had died in a fire. Or with Jenova sprouting appendages the color of blood and pale ice as her body erupted with varicose tentacles and organs. Or how she grew, screaming.

At the sound, Shin-Ra guards appeared out of nowhere and rushed Zack, while Sephiroth floated to the top of the well. Cloud knew he should help his friend, but he couldn't move. Tifa knelt by his side in the same brown leather outfit she had once worn. She pressed her hands to his face and pleaded with wordless sounds that he could no longer hear.

He shook his head and closed his eyes to the pain in her ruby red eyes.

Already Zack had cleaved his weapon at the nearest guard, lacerating his arm into a river of blood. The blade bowed to the right and planted itself in the stomach of his next attacker. He deflected a blow aimed at his ribcage, before countering with a cut that severed the barrel from the gun and a blunt-force hit to the head that splattered skull.

Cloud's breath fell in helpless pleas at the sight, and he jumped to run headlong into the well. His sword crashed into the leg and jostled the beams. He pulled it out and swung again. Throwing his weight into each splinter of wood to get to the man at the top. The well creaked and groaned, and bent into arthritic, disjointed poses on the verge of falling and Tifa screamed something about how he had promised and tried pulling him away.

A rush of energy rammed into his stomach and he flew back to the wall, colliding into Tifa on impact.

His eyes widened, and she moaned at her bruised ribs.

"Tifa, I--" he pleaded.

"Pitiful, isn't it," Sephiroth's voice swam in the air around them, "how easy it is to break a promise."

"Shut up!" Cloud snapped, head thrashing widely as he searched for the source of those words.

"Cloud...Cloud. Look at me." Tifa's voice was softer than it had been. "Just keep looking at me."

But he shook his head in shock. "Promise. I... you're...I promised."

He scrambled away from her, dragging himself across the floor. It was a struggle to put some distance between her and himself, and shakily he grabbed his sword, standing between her and the collapsing well.

While the guards had all but surrounded his friend.

Zack knocked them away with each hit, and they stumbled into a murky mess of blood and dirt. He crashed his elbow into the face of one who had snuck up behind him, while he jabbed his sword into dying onslaught. The man clutched his face, spun, and spotted Tifa. When the rifle lifted, Cloud sliced through it and drew his blade through the guard's heart.

He wavered on his feet, and his sword clattered to the ground. Cloud stumbled blindly for Tifa, barely able to see from the piercing screams in his head. Fluorescent green spots littered his range of vision, and he felt himself lifted by two sets of hands and deposited on a bed.

But when he shook his head again, the screams cleared. And he found himself in a room both strange and familiar in its reminiscence of his hometown, while Sephiroth floated down from the ceiling next to his mother.

"Come on, man." Zack was shaking one of his shoulders violently, while he held Sephiroth and his mother at bay with his sword. "You gotta fight."

Tifa was running her gloved hands through his hair, "Remember how you fought on Mount Nibel? You saved me."

"But I..." He remembered the monsters appearing on the mountain path. _The smell of blood._

"You have to wake up and fight. Just like you did then."

_And Zack standing over the beasts with his sword._

"Yeah, man. Awesome job, and that was before I taught you _anything_. Come on. We can't do this without you."

_Use brings about wear, tear, and rust._

"Is that what happened?" Sephiroth's voice interjected. "Is that how you remember it, Cloud?"

"Shut the fuck up, Sephiroth!" Zack snapped. "Come on, man. You want to be a hero."

"But you saved her on the mountain."

"No!" Her voice was desperate. "You fought of the monsters before Zack could even get there. Like you promised.

"So fight," she whispered.

Cloud yelled and stumbled to his feet when his friends suddenly crashed into a nearby wall.

But Sephiroth ignored him. "Lies. All lies." He spun his wrist in a circle and Cloud found himself suspended in air, unable to move.

Tifa rushed forward to help him but was yanked back by Zack as Jenova swept forward with a lethal sashay. She drew her arms together as if in a cocoon, then with a feral scream, burst forth with serpentine hair and feet, and teeth that sparked in the light.

Sephiroth's mother was a monster. And she ached for the kill.

But what stopped Cloud's heart were the appendages that sprung forth from her back, unfeathered in veinous red and spread almost as if materialized out of the ether.

"So you finally see." Sephiroth waved towards the window, then towards the demonic wings lifted in an unholy rage, while Cloud flailed to free himself from his chokehold. But each movement slowly sucked more life out of him.

And the man before him only smiled, before flinging him against the wall.

"The puppet is the master's to manipulate."

Cloud gripped his throat, clawing at the rough material that surfaced there and the shoulder plates that suddenly bit into his skin.

"A SOLDIER uniform, really? How predictable."

Cloud scowled. "Shut up. I didn't do any of this."

"Of course not, puppet."

Jenova slunk towards him, draping her tentacles across his chest and pinning him to the wall now shifted into the midnight shades of a forgotten town. She flung two others at his friends who were sneaking towards him along the edge. Light burst forth from her eyes, emblazoning the dusty ground and slicing it open until three new creatures with metal arms and glowing red eyes emerged.

Tifa crouched and swept at their feet with her own, and Zack volleyed over her, crushing his blade against the rush of flesh. Sparks flew, and fire erupted from their mouths, as the creatures screamed in pain.

Zack cut one across the throat, while she kicked back and dropped another into the still open chasm. But with each minion that fell, another took its place, until a swarm of metal and red advanced on the two fighting in brown and black. Tifa's breath was steady, but heavier than he had ever heard, and even Zack's notorious calling cards seemed forced and weary.

And Cloud could only watch his friends fight.

Jenova ascended to what had once been the ceiling, but was now strung with metallic cables weaving their web across the sky.

Her eyes burned with a white fire and her wings pulsed in what Cloud realized, was the same rhythm as his own heart.

A sick smile crept over her lips before emitting another wail that split the ground and shook the foundations until hunchbacked guards with dark wings lurched forward.

"Isn't this what you've always wanted? An angel?" Sephiroth asked as he shot to the sky.

Zack attacked first, lashing at the leftmost group. Fire raged as he chopped, then uppercut into the meeting of metals. He shifted on his feet, stepped back, then spun forward with a flurry of steel to slash through the ribcage of one creature, then severed the throat of another before turning about-face and implanting the tip into his stomach.

Tifa was moving furiously between her two opponents, volleying several punches between a guy's stomach and his temple, before flipping back, pivoting and executing a roundhouse kick. A sickening crack splintered the air, and the guard slumped to the ground.

Another rushed at her back, arms circling her before she ducked and swept his feet out from beneath him. She stood strong, prepared, while the first vaulted upright and clumsily swung his scythe at her face. She met the flat edge with her fist, breaking its momentum, before kicking the blade out of his hands. Retrieved in midair, the spinning blade sung as it slashed through the creature's neck.

The bodies dissolved into a phosphorous green haze, and Zack draped an arm over Tifa's shoulders.

"Come on, Seph. You and mommy dearest are gonna have to do better than that."

But the smile on his face vanished when Jenova screamed and six more swarmed them.

The sound broke Cloud's incapacitation. In an instant, his hands flew to his ears and he grimaced. "Sephiroth! Stop!"

"Really? I expected so much more from you." The silvered demon whisked next to his mother, drawing another clone from the oozing viscera of one Tifa had just decimated with a blow to the head.

The creature that stepped out of the swirling haze was eerily familiar. A reptilian beast, bearing claw and teeth, leapt at Zack's throat, while whipping its tail for the soft spot behind his friend's skull. But Tifa kicked forward, sprawling its mass against the wall. In a fury Zack waved his blade into the monster, releasing a bolt of energy that arced and scorched the humanoid forms that had appeared behind them.

"Taking cues from Hojo?" Zack's smile was cocky, "Show some originality."

Sephiroth's expression bordered on cruel, and the kick he landed to Zack sent him sprawling. "As you wish."

The debris on the floor liquefied, then surged forth with the crackle of electricity and the crunch of bones. The gargantuan monster that burst forth was unlike any that Cloud had ever seen, and he wrestled to free his arms from the invisible ties strapping him to the wall.

It reared on its two legs, while metallic spindle talons emerged from fluorescent wings peaked with spear-like prongs. The creature grappled with its scimitar, fumbling it between its two hands before a blinding light peaked, and it charged.

"Cloud!" Tifa called, as she attacked, before being swept aside by a casual flick of a wing. "You have to wake up and fight!"

"What?!" His fingers scrambled for purchase in the shallow tally marks, and he anchored himself in them while pushing at the wall with the balls of his feet.

"Come on, Spike!" Blood splattered across Zack's face as he connected with the behemoth's left wing. "Time to run amok."

"I'm...trying," he gasped, before falling straight onto sandy loam in the middle of nowhere. Zack's sword was embedded in the opposite wall where it had struck drywall instead of meeting flesh.

The monster had disappeared, and Cloud spun his head wildly searching for the next round.

But Jenova floated back down, coiling her tentacles around herself and folding her wings. Tifa rushed to his side and curled her body around his kneeling form. "Come on, Cloud," she whispered. "I need you to fight."

"Interesting, isn't it?"

Tifa's voice was still calling him, but Cloud couldn't ignore the menace dripping from Sephiroth's tone. "Why would she need you to fight for her?"

"Shut up!" she seethed. And then back to Cloud: "Don't listen to him. You promised to be my hero, remember?"

Sephiroth pumped his black wing once, and circled over their forms.

"Were you? Who left her behind to die?"

Cloud's eyes hardened. "I was busy killing _you._"

"And did you? Who truly died there? Not I, I assure you."

"Don't listen to him. He's just messing with your head," she pleaded.

"You said it yourself," Sephiroth taunted. "She's an angel. A dead lie."

"_What_?"

"An angel..." the silver-haired man repeated, "that heaven's a lie."

Cloud almost laughed as he spat, "If she's not real, then neither are you."

But the ice cold press of Sephiroth's long, thin sword materialized at his throat.

"No, Cloud. This pain is _very_ real."

Sephiroth smirked, and Cloud used the split second to twist away. Tifa skidded his sword across the floor and he flipped it upright just as it collided with Masamune.

Jenova shrieked, summoning a horde of vicious slug-like creatures that threatened to suck out his soul like a ghost of a man grasping for a second chance. Cloud buckled to his knees and barely shielded the arching aim for his neck, before he again felt his voice and will being drained from him.

Jenova slinked towards him, curling her tentacles around his feet and inching them towards his head. Zack was throwing every move he had at the slugs that had flanked them in a protective shield, but every time he cut down one, six more arrived. His sword slipped off their hides blanketed with slime after each hack he took at their sprawling, writhing limbs. Tifa's blows stunned a few of the creatures, disorienting them before the sudden death of steel.

But with each kill, when Jenova's mindless minions dissipated into the scintillating mist, and Tifa and Zack directed their efforts at the monster slowly strangling him in her grasp, Sephiroth would wave his hand and she would shriek, and a new wave of reinforcements would appear.

And Cloud slumped even weaker against the slick coils.

"Cloud!" Zack grunted as he sliced through one slug's spinal cord. "Come on, man! You can fight this."

He spun, then hurled a ball of fire at one creature before beheading it. "You kicked his ass once, right? Should be a cinch."

When his voice had returned, Cloud didn't know, but he barely mustered the strength to mumble, "I didn't..."

"You can do this! He'll destroy everything if you don't."

"I don't know..." He glanced at where Tifa had hunched over to catch her breath before flinging herself at another monster and kicking it into the wall. The creature shifted just as her fist smashed through the plaster.

Sephiroth floated down before him, leveling Masamune at his head. "Why bother? What could a puppet do?"

"No!" Tifa screamed before he even registered the laser-like glow from Jenova's eyes as she raised him towards her mouth. There was a crash and a shriek, and he fell to the ground upon a mess of severed tentacles. Zack swung his blade back to annihilate the last of the larval minions, while Tifa launched a full frontal attack at the dismembered creature.

Cloud stumbled for his sword, while she continued her assault. She swept forward, knocking Jenova back with a kick, before grabbing the nearest appendage with a twist and a snap.

The wing oozed onto her hand, but she tossed it aside, and Jenova emitted a sound that curdled his blood.

The room burst into flames, and Sephiroth's form sliced through them with an energy blast that nailed Zack to the wall, barely conscious. Cloud's hands trembled and he rushed forward, until Sephiroth hoisted Tifa up by her hair and sliced at her chest.

She dropped back with wide eyes. And Cloud watched her fall, fall, fall to the ground, and he sprinted to her side, feeling the liquid proof of her existence slip through his raised fingers. But she blinked up at him, and smiled with harrowed breath, "No giving up."

"What you cherish most," Sephiroth ghosted towards them, rearing back the sword aimed at her heart, "give me the pleasure of taking it away."

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?!" Cloud bit off as he crashed towards Sephiroth in a flurry of metal meeting metal. But he easily pushed him off, and Cloud struggled to regain his footing on one of the rocky outcrops that jutted out from the sandy wasteland.

He bent his knees and sprung in pointed attack, only to be deflected.

"What do you want?" Cloud seethed from his stance far beneath where Sephiroth hovered.

"What any master requires: abject obedience."

He shot forward with a burst of energy that Cloud matched with his own. "Or your complete annihilation."

Cloud swung his sword violently, colliding with the flat end of Masamune each time, until Sephiroth countered with a thrust that sent him flying into stone. His head snapped against the rock, and he twisted away, just as Sephiroth's blade embedded itself above him.

He levered himself to his feet in a flip that placed him behind Sephiroth's back with his sword at his throat.

Masamune whipped around in a thrumming halo, and Cloud dropped to his knees and rolled away to avoid its strike.

He vaulted from ledge to ledge on the cliff, narrowly missing the impact of metal each time. He launched himself into an open area and whipped his head and sword around frantically in the search for his blurred enemy.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Jenova lurching on the ground for her fallen wing, and Zack dragging Tifa's form away from the heat of battle. But he could barely react before Sephiroth flew at him headlong, and their swords met in a blaze of sparks. Cloud's battered Masamune with each barrage of hits, before he leapt wingless into the sky and landed on the next outcrop.

"Oh, where did you find this strength?" Sephiroth mocked in low tones.

"No way I'd tell you!" Cloud replied, before he flipped backwards, and crashed his sword down with a beam of energy that exploded rock to reveal a steel door swung open to a black void.

Jenova screamed, and Cloud winced before loosening a blade and wedging it out of the main body of his sword. His two weapons whirled through the air, seeking a direct hit.

But one slipped, and Masamune sliced into Cloud's left arm. He flashed a frantic glance to a stirring Tifa, still held within Zack's protective grasp.

Sephiroth assumed a wolfish smile. "I see," he said as he wrenched the blade down the front of his arm. "Just know that should you choose to wake up and fight, as they say, _she_ will disappear."

The steel edge bit into Cloud's hand when he grabbed it. But he pushed it away and crashed his main sword onto Masamune's tip and pinned it to the ground. "Get the fuck out!" he shouted, and swung his other weapon at Sephiroth's face, catching the ends of his hair.

He clicked the pieces back together, and met Sephiroth in a violent offensive drive. Each clink of metal reminded him of the screams, and Cloud threw his weight harder into every crisscrossing slash.

He landed another straight hit that reverberated through the longer, thinner sword. Then whirled his blade around, charging it, before he shouted again, "Just get out!" and launched a beam of energy that paralyzed Sephiroth and his mother in a circle of metal.

Cloud attacked, concentrating his force into each assault, until he used the final hit to send them through the door and into the darkness. He caught himself on the door jamb and frantically grabbed the handle to yank it closed.

And the screams started with a vengeance that forced him to his knees.

All he could see was her blood on the floor.

"Cloud!

"Cloud, man!" Zack rushed to his side, but Cloud pushed his arm away as he crawled towards Tifa. She blinked at him, and he grasped her fingers within his own, forcing himself to swallow down the pain ringing in his head.

Zack placed a hand on his shoulder in understanding. "You gotta fight them out there."

Cloud shook his head and heaved for air.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Zack continued. "But, the price of freedom is always steep."

The screams were piercing his skull in a single long draw, and Cloud closed his eyes and raised his face upwards. But then he swallowed, leaning down to whisper words against her hair, ones he was sure she already knew-- had always known.

And she smiled. Her hand stroked down the side of his cheek, slipping over his lips, hovering over his eyelids, and the pain subsided for a moment.

"Go," she murmured. "You'll be late."

He nodded and stumbled to his feet, before summoning the strength to spin the sword onto his back. "Would hate...to miss that party."

"You're gonna make it. You got that?" Zack ruffled Cloud's hair and grinned. "Knock 'em dead."

"Yeah." Cloud doubled over to catch his breath before rearing up to smash his sword into the ground and aim a beam of energy at the door. "Let's mosey."

"_Let's mosey_. All that time I spent teaching you, and _that's_ what you came up with? Oh man--"

Cloud stepped into the darkness, turning for one last retort or look of reassurance. But the door had swung shut, and for the first time in his life, he felt completely alone.

And the world was screaming.


	19. Prima Luce

Crawling.

He crawls: through the mud and wreckage of a thousand lives unlived for themselves. The scent of death is strong here, and he follows it.

He wants to collapse with the weight of it all, but because there's nothing else to do when your lifeline is bleeding out before you, he stares and whispers a name.

"Zack..."

The man before him chokes and lowers his eyes wisped and blurred in haze to focus on the lone survivor. "For the...both of us..."

"Both of us?"

"That's right...you're gonna...

"You're gonna..." He raises his arm, reaching for the sky; but it falls short, crashing into Cloud and staining him red with the blood of memories and angel wings and dreams and honor. "Live. You'll be...my living legacy."

The hand drops, and half the world is seen in crimson.

There is life and death in that half, in his friend and his sword. In the equivocal slip between past and present.

"My honor, my dreams...they're yours now."

But as always, after words and weapons, there is grave silence.

And prayers. With eyes that lift heavenward; the same eyes as the dead: blue rimmed in mako green--the mark of a SOLDIER, First Class. They assume the look of eternal supplication.

And he screams.

All the thousand screams he has suppressed come pouring through in that one moment. Released as he loses his soul, part dead and forgotten, part closed away; a lifetime's worth of screams burn in that solitary note.

And the darkness wins.

The world crumbles a little more, but he still ends with whispered thanks, a promise, knowing that a long time ago those meant everything to him.

But now, resigned, he drags himself to his feet for the final act of a soulless, loveless life. The part of him that once knew more is sealed and shut, to open for no one except she who holds the key.

So he walks with only a legacy to the place that calls for him. Something in his soul aches to slink towards the grime of misbegotten civilization.

He shakes his head, and focuses on what's ahead of him--not behind, battle scarred in forgotten blue. Even though he knows that somebody, somewhere once knew him.

His eyes are proof that they existed.

And perhaps, somewhere deep in his heart or someone else's, he exists too.

But not today.

Today he walks away when everything ends on a name, and he thinks this is twice that that's happened.

At least this time the world had the sense to weep for its demise.

Not his, though. Not his.

He lives.

**XXXX**


End file.
